To help people better understand the routes and the offer available throughout the day and week, Transportes Colectivos do Barreiro (TCB) has launched a new network map and new spines.
The organization and availability of information are crucial for attractive public transport. This includes clearly publicizing timetables and routes, as well as implementing real-time communication systems, such as mobile apps and information panels at stations. At the end of the day, it's important that the experience of current passengers is as satisfactory as possible and also that new passengers can be attracted - people who haven't used public transport before because it's complicated.
Transportes Colectivos do Barreiro (TCB), the municipal company that operates Barreiro's buses, launched a new network diagram and also new spines. These documents, available online as well as at the stops, are intended to help passengers better understand the routes and the offer available throughout the day and week.
The TCB believe that the new network "it will be a useful tool for our passengers, allowing them to plan their journeys more effectively"while the new pimples, "with a new design and new information", promise "to offer a more visually friendly experience, making it more intuitive to use, resulting in a better experience for our passengers". These two new instruments are a continuation of the TCB design originally designed by José Mendes' studio and which, since 2011, has been worked on by the designer Pedro Gonçalves.
Transparency and accessibility of information play a fundamental role in promoting trust and the effectiveness of the public transport system. With these new maps and diagrams, Transportes Colectivos do Barreiro provides a representation of its routes, stops, connections and landmarks.
You can download the new designs here:
Despite this communication effort, TCB is still the only public transport operator in the entire Lisbon metropolitan area without standardized information that can be made available to navigation applications (such as Google Maps, etc.). These limitations stem from the computer systems developed in the past by an external company. Due to these constraints, TCB does not currently have the technical capacity to produce data in the standardized formats, namely GTFS and GTFS-RT, which feed the aforementioned apps. Barreiro's buses do, however, have real-time information in their proprietary application (iOS e Android).
Updated at 18:40 on 4/01/2024: correction on the authorship of the design.
