Carris Metropolitana goes ahead even in January in the North Bank

This Thursday, November 17, at a meeting with the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML), the Municipalities of the North Bank of the Tagus and Transportes Metropolitanos de Lisboa (TML), the transport operators Viação Alvorada and Rodoviária de Lisboa, responsible for the future provision of the transport service on the north bank, have assumed that they will be able to start the road operation under the Carris Metropolitana brand in early January 2023.guaranteeing the number of vehicles and drivers required for the contractual offer, which presupposes from the outset a significant increase in lines and timetables.

With a month and a half to go before Carris Metropolitana starts operating on the North Bank, passengers can already start to familiarize themselves with the new types of lines, fares, timetables and routes, with the logic of line numbering and with the conversion of current lines to future lines, and information materials are planned, both on the official Carris Metropolitana websiteas on the ground, starting this Friday, November 18.

Carris Metropolitana is the brand name of the new road operation, an initiative of the municipalities and AML which, through TML, implements a large-scale project to manage more than 20,000 road services spread over an area of about 3,000 square kilometers. This project is characterized by a high degree of technological complexityThis is due to the homogenization of image and information to the public.

Carris Metropolitana - a brand owned by Transportes Metropolitanos de Lisboa - was created with the aim of unifying public road transport in the AML. Since June/July, the operators Alsa Todi and Transportes Sul do Tejo (TST) have operated under it in the municipalities of the South Bank (Alcochete, Almada, Moita, Montijo, Palmela, Setúbal, Sesimbra and Seixal).

The introduction of Carris Metropolitana had a number of problems at its start, as we reported here, but there was a continued effort to address them. The hiring of drivers, which is mainly lacking in Alsa Todi, has allowed the service to be regularized and launch the lines which were already contracted but not yet in operation. On the North Bank, information on the new stops and lines is already visible on the ground, and there are already several buses covered in yellow - some even have the new brand.

In January 2023, Carris Metropolitana will reach the North Bank of the Tagus through the operators Viação Alvorada and Rodoviária de Lisboa in the municipalities of Amadora, Loures, Mafra, Odivelas, Oeiras, Sintra and Vila Franca de Xira. In Lisbon, Carris, owned by the city council, will remain and in Cascais, MobiCascais, also managed by the municipality.