The city council will opt for a new concession to manage urban public transport with a contract of 11.65 million euros per year and a duration of ten years. The municipal government plans to bring the tender documents to a plenary session before the end of the year, after presenting them in the autumn.
The decision comes after comparing the cost of this concession with the option of municipalizing the service, a possibility that will be discarded despite criticism from Comú. The main political clash is that the council defends that indirect management will allow public control of the service to be maintained, while the opposition maintains that the new contract compromises the model for at least a decade.
Cristina Morón defended a concession of 11.65 million per year
During the informative commission, the deputy mayor for Security and Mobility, Cristina Morón, maintained that the choice of model was not solely based on political criteria. The council requested reports from five companies in the sector to compare the costs of a new concession with those of an eventual direct management.
Alsa, Avanza, Moventis, Hispano Igualadina, and Tusgsal participated in this analysis. With that documentation, the municipal government concluded that the most convenient option is to re-tender the service.
"The management model is a political decision that must be supported by technical criteria and, after analyzing the costs very carefully, we have reached the conclusion that the most convenient thing is to go for a concession" - Cristina Morón, deputy mayor for Security and Mobility
Morón added that the service and infrastructure will remain public and that the delegation will only affect management. She also announced that the new tender documents will incorporate more municipal control to guarantee the quality of transport.
The current contract can be extended after the extension approved in December
The municipal calendar involves presenting the tender documents in the autumn and submitting the concession to a plenary vote before the end of the year. Until the award is resolved, the government considers extending the current contract.
That contract had already been extended last December for one year. The new extension appears as a probable option to avoid a gap in the provision of the service while the tender process is completed.
Faced with the position of the local executive, the Comú group rejected the push for another concession. The party considers that this path "mortgages public transport for at least another decade and condemns us to an expensive service".
In the same informative commission, Cristina Morón summarized the municipal government's position with a final thought on the open debate: "More than the management model, what matters to the citizens is that the service works".