For years, it was enough for an Egyptian over sixty to take out his national ID card and show it to the conductor to buy a half-fare ticket on a public transport bus. Today, however, he must obtain a prepaid card, top it up, keep track of its balance, and tap it on the machine twice in order to obtain the same discount; otherwise, he pays the full ticket. This is how what was presented as a discount turned into a new burden on pensioners, a number of whom spoke to Zawia3 about their surprise at finding that they now pay more than they used to.
In mid-July, the Cairo Public Transport Authority announced a new system in which the ticket price is calculated according to the number of stops for holders of the prepaid card. Whoever travels a short distance on a regular bus pays a quarter ticket at EGP 5, the half at EGP 8, and the full ticket to the end of the line at EGP 13; on air-conditioned buses, the full ticket is EGP 25 and the half EGP 18. Whoever pays in cash gets no discount, even if they ride a single stop. The card itself is granted free of charge at a nominal price of EGP 80, paid in instalments through a deduction of EGP 5 from each ticket, and it is topped up via the “Tawally” app with EGP 50, or inside the buses, or at approved outlets.
According to the Authority’s instructions, the rules for obtaining the discount on air-conditioned lines require holders of cards for veterans, war victims and their companions, military personnel, and those over sixty to obtain a card dedicated to these categories from the “Tawally” outlets at the stations of Abbasiya, Abdel Moneim Riad, Ahmed Helmy, Ataba, Qism El-Hadayek, Cairo Airport, the First Settlement, Bulaq El-Dakrour and El-Moneeb; whoever does not carry the card pays the full fare. However, the Authority later denied that it had abolished the half ticket or the exemption on regular lines, stressing that free and discounted travel for those over sixty, veterans and military personnel continues, and that those over seventy and holders of veterans’ cards and of cards for victims of war operations are fully exempt on regular lines, without a card and without a paper ticket.
A half ticket that vanished
Between the official denial and what is happening on the buses lies a wide gap. While the Authority’s statements say that paper half tickets are still available for military personnel over sixty at all stops on regular buses without a card, the testimonies of older people who are not military personnel tell another story.
Samir Youssef, 69, a retiree, boarded the bus from Warraq El-Arab to Abbasiya, and the driver informed him that there was no longer a half ticket and that payment was now made with the card, which the driver himself sells to passengers. Samir paid EGP 50 in exchange for a card that was supposedly charged with that amount, but the driver inserted it into the machine again and topped it up with another EGP 50, and he discovered that his balance had become EGP 100, not 50; this prompted two other passengers to hand back the card after they had thought that only EGP 50 was required. Then, when he tapped it, he was surprised by the deduction of the full ticket, EGP 13, because the driver had not alerted him that he had to tap the card again when getting off so that the stops would be counted. Samir says the new instructions have harmed older people, since calculating the half fare has become tied to the number of stops through what he describes as a “blind system” that does not look at the passenger’s category, “whether it is a child or a man a hundred years old”; whoever travels six stops pays half the value, while he travels twelve stops and pays it in full despite being entitled to the discount. Had he known this from the start, he says, he would have replaced the card with a full ticket or taken the metro on a half ticket worth EGP 6. He concludes: “I did not top it up again, because it imposed financial burdens on me and annoyed me.”
Essam Afifi, 68, lived the same story when he boarded from El-Tagamoa to Tahrir: the driver informed him that the half ticket had been cancelled as of 15 July, and that whoever does not buy the card pays the full fare; so he paid a full EGP 10 instead of the half he was used to, and the older people around him did the same. During a field tour, others confirmed to Zawia3 that they had been forced to pay the full ticket after drivers informed them of the cancellation, as long as they did not carry the card.
A driver at the Authority, who asked that his name not be published, reveals some of what lies behind this. He says that many drivers no longer have half tickets in their possession, and that some of them carry only the full denominations, in implementation of instructions whose reasons he does not know, “as they are decisions that concern the Authority and the chairman of the board”. He believes the aim is to push older people towards the card like the rest of the citizens, but the mechanism does not serve their interests: “There is something called serving citizens; the half ticket is supposed to stay subsidised.” He adds that the system was better suited to the new air-conditioned buses, whereas on the old ones, frequent breakdowns ignite tension between passengers and the driver when a passenger pays a high ticket and then the bus breaks down, while on the new ones “he is reassured that he will arrive quickly because the service is much better”.
A balance that evaporates and a machine that swallows the difference
Older people’s complaints did not stop at the disappearance of the half fare, but extended to a balance that evaporates and a machine that swallows the difference. From Triumph to the airport, Abdo Qenawy, 68, was used to riding the bus for five stops, so he acquired the card from the driver for EGP 50 when he was informed that the half fare had been abolished. When he was about to tap it, the driver told him that its balance had run out, so he topped it up with EGP 20; then it ran out after a few days, so he topped it up with another EGP 20, before he learned from the station supervisor that he had EGP 8, and that the “change” only appears by freezing a balance, so his balance became EGP 28. He recounts that the machine took the full ticket from him, EGP 16, then on getting off deducted EGP 5, the price of the five stops, and returned EGP 11 to him, and that an employee at one of the stations told him that the price of the card is EGP 100 and that every passenger must top it up with EGP 50; when he complained that the remainder does not appear on the screen, the employee answered that the machine had a fault. Abdo found that his balance was more than the driver had stated, and asked who bears the cost of the machines’ faults. He adds that he used to travel from Heliopolis to the airport on a half ticket worth EGP 10 regardless of the number of stops, but now he pays the full ticket like an ordinary passenger, as the half fare has become tied to a specific number of stops; if he rides the trip to its end on the air-conditioned bus, the full ticket, EGP 25, is collected from him.
Faults do not spare younger people either. Mohamed Sayed, 30, a security employee, has been riding the air-conditioned bus from El-Demerdash to the Fifth Settlement since he obtained the card in February, and half a ticket used to be deducted from him at EGP 18, until, since June, he was surprised by the full ticket, EGP 25, being taken when he got off, after the machine used to return EGP 7 to him, without his knowing the reason, and without those who experienced the same situation recovering the rest of their money. When he called the hotline of the “Tawally” company to complain, he found it out of service, so his enthusiasm waned for the cards he had been counting on to reduce his spending on transport, which amounts to EGP 1,300 a month. Besides the faults, some passengers fall into the trap of the technology itself: Mahmoud Sameh, an employee at the Al-Azhar Sheikhdom, downloaded the “Tawally” app and topped it up from his bank card, then discovered that his phone does not support the NFC feature, so his balance got stuck; he called the company’s line and found it out of service, and contacted it via its page without his problem being solved.
There is another problem whose source is the drivers themselves. Ahmed Ramadan, 62, a retiree, complains that they do not know the system and have not been trained on it, to the point that he would not have known that the card had to be tapped twice, on boarding and on getting off, had it not been for an employee at one of the “Tawally” outlets who explained the method to him before he paid a full ticket. He adds that the buses are delayed by one to two hours, so he is forced to ride collective transport buses so as not to be late for his check-ups at the Saray El-Qobba clinics, where he pays a regular ticket and does not benefit from the discount. The Authority’s director of relations responds to complaints about the shortage of buses and long waits by saying that the Authority reviews the needs of each area according to its population density through the planning and traffic department, and he called on those affected to submit an official complaint via the Authority’s page so that increasing the numbers can be studied. He adds that the Authority has set up an opinion-measurement unit that follows the system, which conducted a survey of drivers to learn about their obstacles and suggestions, and that they asked for the electronic payment card to be unified across all buses instead of cash, especially after the card’s price was cut to EGP 80, EGP 50 of which is the first top-up and the rest paid in instalments. Responding to the technical complaints, Engineer Shaimaa Ahmed Ali, director of the communications department and project manager, tells Zawia3 that the NFC requirement was in the old version of the app, and that since 15 July the company has made payment possible via a “QR code” for those whose phones lack the feature, by swiping it from bottom to top so that the full ticket is deducted, after which the “cashback” is returned on getting off. She explains that the balance is valid for one year and the card for two years, and that anyone whose machine breaks down can recover their balance via the hotline or the WhatsApp service available from 9 am to 5 pm throughout the week, acknowledging that the hotline has a problem that is being worked on, that a lost card is lost along with its balance because it does not record identifying data, and that the company is developing this service and provides continuous training for drivers through a technical engineer at the garage who guides them before the service sets out.
The Authority denies, and the law obliges
In the face of these testimonies, Mohamed Abu El-Yazid, the Authority’s director of public relations, denies that the half ticket has been abolished for those over sixty, considering that the complainants may be a tiny number, and attributing the matter to possible violations by drivers, over which investigations are opened and penalties imposed; but at the same time he affirms that those over sixty and veterans now have dedicated cards, and that they only enjoy the discount by having a special card issued from the aforementioned outlets, while those over seventy use the Authority’s subscription card. Engineer Shaimaa affirms the same point: whoever is over sixty must obtain a dedicated card after verification of their identity and age, which grants them a half ticket and a quarter ticket according to the number of stops, while the card is not required for those over seventy, in contrast to the exemption decision applied in 2020, which required only showing the national ID card to the conductor in order to ease the burden on older people. When Abu El-Yazid was asked why the exemption with the national ID card, without a card, had not continued, he attributed it to the absence of the conductor and the impossibility of the driver checking ID cards while driving, adding that the fees for the pass of those over seventy reach EGP 150 and that it is renewed annually.
The core of the crisis appears to be old: Major General Rizk Ali, a former head of the Authority, had previously denied the abolition of the half ticket for those over sixty or of the full exemption for those over seventy, after complaints that the Authority monitored on social media in 2020 about conductors refusing to grant older people their rights, stressing at the time that a conductor who commits a violation is suspended from work for three months, and that citizens can submit an urgent complaint to have him punished. As for the law, it stands on the side of the older person: Law No. 19 of 2024, in its Article 27, provides for granting him a partial exemption from the cost of state-owned public transport, with the competent ministry bearing the value of the exemption according to the rules set by the executive regulations, while its Article 46 punishes with imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year and a fine of EGP 1,000 to EGP 10,000, or one of the two penalties, anyone charged with caring for an older person who neglects their duties or appropriates the older person’s financial assistance for themselves. The issue is not marginal: according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), the number of older people in Egypt rose to 9.8 million in 2025, at 9.1% of the population, after it had been 9.3 million in 2024, at 8.8%.
At the other end of the experience stands Ashraf Abu El-Fotouh, 41, a securities trading manager, who found relief in the system. He used to take the bus from Bab El-Khalq to El-Esaaf and pay the full ticket despite travelling half the distance, because some conductors refused to give him the half fare, until he learned about the card. He recounts that when he asked for a half ticket he was told that the cash system had been abolished; he thought the driver was harassing him, so he got off and boarded another bus, only to find the same news. Then he inserted the card and the full ticket, EGP 13, was deducted from him, and on getting off he got back EGP 8, meaning that he paid EGP 5 for four stops, with another EGP 5 deducted as an instalment for the card, and he had EGP 40 left from the first top-up. He believes the system has made him economise, and has ended his quarrels with conductors over the half fare and the change, as payment is no longer at their discretion.
Thus the system brought relief to a passenger aged forty-one and weighed down those over sixty; to date, the Authority has not announced that a dedicated card is required for older people over sixty to activate the half ticket, despite announcing the entitlement of military personnel. And the exemption that used to be obtained with an ID card in hand has remained conditional on a card that must be issued, topped up and monitored, on a machine that does not err, and on a driver who knows to tap the card twice.
