During the course of a business breakfast event entitled “Innovating for progress: the role of business in sustainable mobility” organised by iryo at the Equestrian Circle of Barcelona, the Chairman of Moventia, Josep Maria Martí, argued that inter-operator cooperation and a firm commitment to buses have been and will continue to be key in absorbing the future growth in demand for public transport in Catalonia.

The event, which took place on Thursday at the headquarters of the Equestrian Circle, gathered Fabrizio Favara, CEO of iryo; Xavier Flores, Managing Director of TMB; Fernando Pacheco, Managing Director of MSC Cruceros España, and Josep Maria Martí, Chairman of Moventia, for a business breakfast discussion moderated by the journalist from La Vanguardia, David Guerrero. The session formed part of the debate around how transport companies have taken on a leading role in the decarbonisation of mobility, undertaking major investments in more sustainable fleets, improving service reliability and expanding the offer to incentivise use of collective transport.

From the very beginning, Josep Maria Martí highlighted the collaboration between different modes of transport and operators by saying “truly sustainable mobility has required and will continue to require coordination between trains, boats, metro, trams, bicycles, cars and especially buses. That was the only way we could shift towards genuinely multimodal mobility”. The Chairman of Moventia underlined the group’s objective “to be part of the machinery that helps to move society and the economy every day”.

In terms of the challenges for the sector, the Chairman of Moventia warned that “we are practically dying from success right now in terms of our passenger numbers”. He went on to explain that the most important immediate challenge lies in how to deal with the 30% growth that Catalonia expects to see over the next five years. With that in mind, he stressed that Moventia “is convinced this increase will be absorbed by public transport and we must endeavour to make sure that means buses”.

For that growth to be viable, the Chairman of Moventia called on public authorities for “legal certainty so the necessary investments can be made in sustainable fleets”. Josep Maria stressed that “such investments cannot be made from one day to the next; reliable forecasts and legal certainty are needed so we can go to the banks and ask for those loans”, directly tying regulatory stability to the sector’s ability to transform its fleets over to cleaner technologies.

His thoughts on the concession framework aroused strong interest among attendees at the event. “We operate under temporary contracts and, if we want to make these investments over the next five years, the sector needs to procure 1,500 vehicles to renew the fleet and absorb the expected growth”, he said. Josep Maria Martí put this number into context by reminding everyone that Catalonia will renew the concession map for the 850 intercity lines managed by the Regional Government in 2028.

The Chairman of Moventia also highlighted the gap between the existing plan and the demographic reality in the region saying that “the current offer was designed for a Catalonia of six million inhabitants, whereas there are eight million of us today and we need to work with ten million in mind”. In this regard, he insisted on the need to “redesign the plan and ensure genuine complementarity between the various modes of transport”, once again highlighting multimodality as a core feature of that strategy.

During the debate section of the event, the Chairman of Moventia also wanted to send a message of balance with regard to private vehicles, saying that “we cannot demonise private vehicles. We should be able to use them in places where there are no alternatives, of which there are still many outside the first and second metropolitan rings of Barcelona”. He went on to add that, in rural areas or those lacking a sufficient public transport offer, “multimodality must also consider the car”, including it as part of the solution and not just part of the problem.