Renfe appeals to the responsibility and good use of the conventional Avant and Media Distancia fertilizers in Castilla y León

• Increase random checks on trains and check in stations to avoid irregular use and remember that the Avant subscriptions subject to subsidy are nominative • The subscriptions allow travel in the region with a state bonus of 50% to which is added another 25% of the Board for registered travelers in Castilla y León

January 9, 2024.- Renfe appeals to the responsibility of the travelers and asks for a good use of the Avant and Media Distancia conventional fertilizers in Castilla y León. The company is intensifying random on-board controls and access controls on this community’s Avant trains to avoid one-off cases of improper use of Avant subscriptions, which are publicly subsidized and nominated.

The company recalls the need to make responsible use of these subscriptions, which are subsidised by the State with a 50% discount in addition to another 25% by the Junta de Castilla y León to registrants in the region.

Renfe continues its work to raise awareness about the good use of subscriptions and has just launched a campaign to redouble the control actions of these and inform travelers, with the aim of stopping the misuse that may be made by a minority of travelers, but which fully affects the other users of the service that uses these trains daily to go to their workplace or place of studies.

This year, Renfe is going to deepen the initiatives to avoid the irregular use of subscriptions in the services of Media Distancia and in the Avant, where an irregular use is still detected that prevents all citizens from enjoying these measures.

Thus, in conventional Media Distancia routes, Renfe has extended to one hour (currently it is 10 minutes) the time in which a reservation must be formalized or, in case of not making the trip, canceled. In this way, users who are not going to use the reserved space with the subscriptions must cancel it with a minimum of 60 minutes in advance. In the event that, at least three times, they have not canceled the place with the aforementioned advance, they will lose the right to purchase new subscriptions during the following 30 days.

Previously, Renfe will send the traveler, on the occasion of the first two cancellations not made with the minimum required advance, communications to the contact provided by the same, which warns him of the possible consequences.

Sometimes, there are users of Avant subscriptions, mainly in the Alicante-Segovia-Madrid corridor, who reserve several seats and then do not travel and do not cancel them, which makes it difficult for other travelers who need to travel at those times and routes to get their place, and causes the train to carry vacant seats that cannot be bought since “full train” appears in the sale.

Fraudulent uses, such as travellers using other cardholders’ subscriptions, have also been detected. Renfe recalls that the subscriptions subject to the grant are nominative (it is necessary that the ID matches the user of the subscription). To travel on board your trains it is necessary to formalize the tickets with a pass and that the identity of the traveler is coincident with the one that appears in your transport title. In the event of proven misuse, Renfe will punish passengers, in accordance with the regulations of ‘General Conditions of Transport Contracts’ of Renfe Travellers.

Awareness campaign

In order to promote the good use of these bonus titles, Renfe will launch an awareness campaign to the citizens in which it is stressed that the misuse of subscriptions is a detriment to the rest of the citizens who want to make their trips.

Additionally, Renfe will perform random checks on its Media Distancia and Avant services to check the correct use of the bonus titles. In the event of detection of non-compliance with the regulations, the anti-fraud measures established in these services will be applied.

Bonus subscriptions for frequent flyers

In Castilla y León, Renfe had issued about 135,000 tickets to travel in the last four months of 2023. More than 61,000 multi-trip titles were subscriptions for Renfe’s High Speed Medium Distance and the rest, 73,000, correspond to free recurring subscriptions for the Wide Metric and Medium Distance services.

The bonus subscriptions are used by frequent travelers in the Avant Alicante-Segovia-Madrid corridor, as well as in the new relations declared OSP (Public Service Obligation) provided on the high-speed network in Castilla y León.