My experience with Madrid’s Public Transportation
By: Connor Haubert
For the past 15 years I have lived in a rural area of Pennsylvania 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I have never spent much more than two weeks in a major city, so when I first arrived in Madrid I was a little nervous. I would be here for two months and no idea what I would do to get around the city. I couldn’t always pay for cabs and the office where I would be interning was too far from my apartment to walk, so I would have to use public transportation. I had been on the subway a few times in New York City, but that was about all of the experience I had with public transportation. Lucky for me, I would only have to take one Metro line to get to and from work, but still, this was something that was out of my comfort zone.
During my first few days in the city, the people in charge of my program brought my group to the center for public transportation. While there we all purchased cards for public transport. These cards would allow us to get onto any bus or metro without having to pay a charge every time. I have to say, these cards were a great investment. I purchased a plan that would allow the customer to prepay for one month of public transportation. During those 30 days you can get on as many busses and metros as you want. I now use the metro all the time and as a result, the card has saved me a lot of money. I would recommend that anyone staying in the city for an extended period of time should buy a public transportation card.
When I went on the metro for the first time, I was shocked at how clean it was. There was no trash or dirt, there were no homeless people sleeping in the seats, and the trains appeared to be almost brand new. There is a great disparity between New York’s subway system and the metro in Madrid and I was shocked at this. Why was this the case? I later found out that unlike the New York subway, the Spanish metro runs from 6:00 AM to 1:30 AM. As a result people who are out later at night (like those who go out to clubs and parties) need to take a cab or walk back to their apartments. This stops a lot of the issues that are had on American public transportation. There are no drunk people littering, damaging, or throwing up in the metro, but because public transport, with the exception of taxis, shuts down late at night, the clubs and bars are open much later than anything I have ever seen. The majority of clubs close at 6:00 AM or even later so their patrons can take public transportation back to their homes.
In addition to being extremely clean, the metro in Madrid runs virtually everywhere. You can get from one side of the city very easily. The metro even runs to the airport which is great. Instead of paying the €30 fare for a taxi, you can take a short ride on the metro into the center of the city from the airport or vice versa. When I came back from an exhausting weekend in Ireland, I took the metro back into the city and I was very happy that it was so easy to do.
The metro also has stations in the most popular places in Madrid. For example, if you wanted to go to a Real Madrid game, you could take the metro to get to Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. If you wanted to go to Retiro Park, you could take the metro to get there. If you wanted to go to Gran Vía, you could take the metro. The metro runs anywhere and everywhere you could want to go. From now on I will be using the metro anytime I want to be someplace.
In addition to a wonderful metro service, Madrid also has a fantastic bus service. The busses are clean and reliable and run every hour all over the city. Each bus also equipped with air conditioning (something that you don’t see everywhere in Madrid, but is desperately needed due to the blazing hot summers) and WIFI which is comes in handy for international students like myself who don’t have much if any data on their phone plan. I don’t use the busses as much as I use the metro, but I have never had a bad experience with them and many of my friends here swear by them.
The public transportation system in Madrid is the best I have ever seen. The metro and busses are always clean, comfortable, and reliable. They are also so easy to use that even a kid from America who has never really used public transportation can learn to use and love them. If you are going to Madrid, you need to use the stellar public transportation.
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