Metropolitan Rails. A public transport giant will be born in Lisbon

From mid 2021 onwards, all buses operating in the 18 municipalities of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML) will belong to the same brand: a Metropolitan Rails.

The announcement was made yesterday after AML launched an international public tender worth 1.2 billion euros (the largest tender ever launched by Portugal in the field of road transport) with a view to improving road public transport service in the 18 municipalities that make up this region.

According to the tender, all buses circulating in the greater Lisbon region will be yellow and will operate under the Carris Metropolitana brand, including those belonging to private operators. The bus fleet will be divided into four concession lots: two on the south bank and two on the north bank (each operator can only win one lot).

The goal? improve service

According to Fernando Medina, Mayor of Lisbon and the Metropolitan Council of the AML, this measure will increase and improve the offer, increasing punctuality, reducing the interval between buses, creating new connections and night and weekend schedules.

This is the biggest competition that the country has ever launched from the point of view of road services, with buses of much better quality, with a much lower average age than the current one. The average age decreases over the time of the competition (…) They will all be integrated into a single brand, a single network, a single information system, which joins the single pass.

Fernando Medina. president of the Lisbon City Council and the Metropolitan Council of the AML

Fernando Medina also stated: “For the first time, a network has been designed that is designed from scratch, in which people's needs and the paths that people need to take are taken into account”.

Which companies can compete?

The international tender launched now will replace the public transport concessions currently in force and is open only to private operators, both those that already operate and others, including foreign companies, and no operator will be able to hold more than 50% of the contracted services.

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The municipal companies that provide transport services within their municipalities, as in Lisbon, Cascais and Barreiro, are not included in the tender. The decision to carry out this tender is due to community impositions that dictate the holding of international tenders for the private operation of public road transport.

The new concessions will last for ten years and are the first step towards giving AML control of public transport operating in its region, including the Metropolitano and the boats of Soflusa and Transtejo.

Sources: Observador, Jornal Económico, Público.