Barcelona city transportation
Barcelona is one of the spanish cities with the best infrastructure and the highest living standard. It has one of the cheapest and most diverse public transport. You can get pretty much everywhere with a large network of metro, trains, bus, tram and Bicing.
Metro is the most common means of transport in Barcelona, the metro network is developed and there are many metro stations all over the city. It’s pretty fast and easy to use. You can find more information about the fares here:
https://www.tmb.cat/en/barcelona-fares-metro-bus
If you don’t need to commute frequently, the best option is the T10 card. It includes 10 trips and it’s personal.
You can download the Barcelona metro map here:
https://www.tmb.cat/en/barcelona-transport/map/metro
Train (Ferrocarril) is a train network very similar to the metro network, but it’s driven by another company and the good thing about it is that it is available in certain parts of the city where you can’t find metro.
Ferrocarril network map is available for download here:
https://www.fgc.cat/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/xarxa_2021.pdf
Bus is another means of transport in Barcelona which is not essential since there are Metro and Ferrocarril, but sometimes it can bring you directly to the place you need and it may be faster as well. One very nice thing about Barcelona is that we have a special night bus network called BusNit, and it helps you to move through the city at night, when all other transports are closed.
Bus network map available for download here:
https://www.tmb.cat/en/barcelona-transport/map/metro
Tram is another alternative transport in Barcelona. It’s one the most modern trams in Europe, it looks very good and it’s comfortable, but it’s available only in certain parts of Barcelona (mostly lower and upper part of the Diagonal avenue).
More info about the Tram network:
https://www.tram.cat/en/lines-and-timetables
Another smart thing about the Barcelona City Transport is that all transport tickets are integrated, which means you can use any kind of transport with the same ticket. (there are some exceptions, mostly with the single trip tickets which are valid only for 1 kind of transport).
Bicing is our favourite transport in Barcelona. It begun a couple of years ago as a city initiative for a more ecologic and healthy way of getting around the city, and now it represents a large bike network for all Barcelona residents. It works like this: you register online, pay the yearly fee, they send you the card by post to the address you leave, than you activate the card online and you’re ready to use it. It’s a magnetic card which you put on a special sensor, it releases the bike, you take it and you can use it up to 30min without any extra charge. After that, every 30min extra are charged separately and the maximum time you can use 1 bike is 2 hours.
Documents you need in order to get a Bicing card:
- spanish ID number or NIE number
- spanish issued bank card and spanish bank account
- address in Barcelona
- pay the yearly fee (50 € at the moment)
You can have a look at the official Bicing web page: (information available only in spanish and catalan)