An objective of the current administration at Palma town hall is that by 2023 the citizens’ card will be operating on mobile phones. This will mean being able to recharge the card using a phone and pay for bus journeys without needing to carry a physical card.
Francesc Dalmau, councillor for sustainable mobility, says that this is a “personal obsession” to ensure that the card can be carried on phones by the time the administration ends in 2023.
New buses being introduced in Palma will help to facilitate this and other innovations. These buses will all be in service by Easter, at which point the next phase of public transport fare integration with the TIB services run by the government can begin. This integration will mean more benefits from using the citizens’ card, while payment for buses using phones will be possible.
Various cities in Spain already have payment with phones; Madrid, Malaga and Valencia, for example. To be able to recharge the citizens’ card using phones will be of greater convenience to the public.
When the “estanco” tobacconists stopped offering this service because they weren’t getting sufficiently high commissions from the town hall, card recharging became less easy.
Establishments which do offer the service aren’t readily identified.
The town hall is meanwhile continuing to expand the zones of the city with 30 kilometre per hour speed limits.
There are four at present - the old centre, where the limit is also down to 20 in Acire areas of restricted access; Rafal-Vivero, Santa Catalina and Son Sardina. Another part of Eixample, yet to be determined, will be the next.
In the meantime, bus passengers in Palma are still trying to get to grips with the recent changes to the routes and services with many people complaining that the new revised system does not work as well as the previous network.