Say goodbye to cardboard cards with magnetic strips on public transport. The main integrated titles of the Autoritad del Transport Metropolità (ATM), among which the two most popular, the T-Casual and the T-Usual, will no longer be sold on this medium before the end of the year. They will be replaced by the T-Mobility in a new version also made of cardboard, but harder and more resistant that will be validated by contact, will not require the prior registration of the traveler in the system, will be obtained like the current ones, at the vending machines, and it will also be rechargeable.
The exact date of the change, which will be automatic, has not yet been decided. It mainly depends on logistical aspects, such as the supply of coils from the vendors, and will be communicated shortly. The day the old cards stop being sold, the new ones will be dispensed. Magnetic cards that are in circulation can be used until the trips or the validity period are over. The ATM is starting today the informative campaign “Soon, only with T-Mobilitat” to prepare users.
The new card will have an acquisition cost of 0.50 euros and will be loaded with the desired title. For T-Casual, T-Familiar and T-Grup it will be completely anonymous. On the other hand, in the case of the T-Usual, you will need to provide your ID or passport number to buy it, which is why it will have a different model. This T-Mobility will have a mainly white background and the letters in green, unlike the plastic T-Mobilitat, which is green and with white inscriptions. The T-16, the T-jove and the titles of large families and single parents are now used exclusively with this model.
Unlike the personalized T-Mobility, which already works and costs 4.50 euros in the plastic version and 1 euro if it is used with the mobile application, the one that will be put into circulation does not allow you to take advantage of the balance of trips pending in another new expedition in case of loss or theft. For this reason, those responsible for the ATM expect the most intensive users, those of the T-Usual, to choose the first. According to surveys, those who so far prefer the cardboard one with a magnetic stripe do so because of habits.
If users of the T-usual had to switch to plastic compulsorily, as was done with the T-jove since March 15, there is a risk that, as happened then, the attention points will be overwhelmed because a lot people have not registered in the system with enough time to renew their subscriptions. As this title can be obtained with the new card without prior registration, this risk is reduced.
The director general of the ATM, Pere Torres, said yesterday that this new version of T-Mobilitat “is not an intermediate step” between the magnetic cardboard titles and the plastic card. “It was planned from the beginning to ensure that sporadic travelers who are not registered when they arrive at a station can travel”, he recalled. This format, although with special characteristics, was already successfully used at the last edition of the Mobile World Congress, which had 155,000 validations from 24,000 users, and at the Congress of the International Union of Public Transport (UITP), with 16,000 of 2,000 people.
T-Mobilitat currently concentrates almost 40% of the validations of the integrated ATM system, around one million on weekdays. Torres predicted that with this new step that will be taken “it will quickly rise to 60%, 70% or 80%”. Before the arrival of the new cards, registrations continue to progress. In September there were 26,000. In total, one million supports have already been issued (70% physical and 30% mobile).
The cardboard with magnetic stripe remains for simple tickets, which because they are not integrated can only be used at one operator, and other more minority cards (the T-Day, the T-Usual for unemployed people , the T-Green and the T-Aire, the latter for days with pollution that has not yet been activated). Over the course of 2024, the ATM plans to incorporate these titles into T-Mobility and also to allow iPhones to be used at the validators (now it is only possible to use Android devices that have NFC).
