New Barcelona public transport cards for under 16s only contactless

The Barcelona area's unlimited free public transport card for 4- to 16-year-olds, the T-16, will as of June 9 only be issued through the T-Mobilitat contactless ticketing system for residents of the 18 municipalities in the first fare zone.

New T-16 applicants will no longer receive a paper version of the card, nor will those who request replacements for stolen, broken, or lost cards. Instead, they will have to use either a rechargeable T-Mobilitat smartcard, which costs €4.50, or a €1 mobile app.

Meanwhile, the remaining 260,000 cards will gradually be exchanged for the T-Mobilitat system in the coming months, completely replacing the paper system by the beginning of next year.

All in all, there are already over 200,000 commuters who use the tap-and-go system, far more than when it was first launched after the Christmas holidays.

"We're moving in the right direction," Pere Torres, the head of the Barcelona area transport authority, said on Wednesday in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, where he unveiled the new T-Mobilitat information center. "Every week that has not had a holiday has exceeded the previous week's number of users."

The system was used 192,843 times on Tuesday, up from the 80,000 daily taps when it was first launched. 

T-Mobilitat, Catalonia's future travel card

The T-Mobilitat transport card is the future of Catalonia’s transportation infrastructure, similar to that already in place in some cities, such as London with the Oyster Card, Melbourne’s Myki, and Madrid’s Tarjeta Multi, for years. 

The card - or app - allows passengers to travel with a tap-and-go system and should be fully rolled out, according to the Catalan government, across Catalonia by 2024. 

However, the rollout of the ticketing system has already experienced a few notable hiccoughs: it has far exceeded the initial budget - by at least €37 million according to an article published by Catalan newspaper Ara - and faced issues that have forced the launch date to be postponed on multiple occasions.

T-Mobilitat has cost €93.6 million as of yet, 62% more than what it was first allocated. Furthermore, while the first T-Mobilitat contract between administrations was signed in 2014, several final rollout dates have been proposed, including 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, but for now, the Catalan government expects it to be up and running across the territory by the end of 2024.