How many passes are needed to travel by public transport every day from Alcoutim to Bordeira, in Faro? Or from Monchique to Vilamoura? Today, “two or three” are needed for these and many other intercity trips in the Algarve. But within about a year, anyone will be able to purchase an intermodal pass, which will allow, in its most comprehensive form, to use any means of transport throughout the region.
AMAL – Comunidade Intermunicipal do Algarve and the managing entities of the different road transport services in the region, including municipalities with urban transport circuits, signed this Monday, June 20th, a memorandum of understanding for the creation of the Intermodal Pass from the Algarve.
These new passes, which António Pina, president of AMAL, hopes will be «available in the first half of next year», will allow the Algarve region to be the first in the country, after the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, to have a single document. to circulate in public transport by road, rail and river.
For the head of the Algarve Intermunicipal Community, this «is another step in the construction of a common mobility project, managed by AMAL», although, for now, the protocol only includes road transport.
“I hope it will then culminate in the fact that we are also the rail transport authority. In order to be more effective in the management of public transport in the Algarve, it is necessary to make the means compatible», illustrated António Pina, on the sidelines of the seminar “The Challenges of Mobility”, which brought together several entities at the School of Hospitality and Tourism of the Algarve, in Faro, and was attended by Jorge Delgado, Secretary of State for Urban Mobility.
The intermodal pass that will be launched «is a way of making the means of transport compatible and of making life easier for the user, who does not have to buy two or three passes».
People can also choose which zoning suits them best, that is, “a tailor-made solution”.
But what does this imply in practice?
According to Avelino Oliveira, directly from OLV, the consultant who studied and prepared the ground for the creation of the Algarve Intermodal Pass, involved an arduous and complicated work.
After all, we are talking about a dozen operators, from Vamus, which is already the result of a concession granted by AMAL as the Road Transport Authority, in the Algarve, to service providers and municipal circuits, including CP, which also if you want to join the intermodal pass.
«It was not easy to find a model, but the Algarve has unique conditions to quickly implement the intermodal, because, in fact, there is a good articulation between transport operators, namely in road mode», he said.
The consultant, who presented the project during the session, explained that one of the major challenges was zoning, that is, defining the different areas in which these single passes will be valid.
The population will be able, from the outset, to buy municipal passes, which allow them to travel to any location in the municipality in question, regardless of the operator. A sub-municipal system is also foreseen, for specific areas within a municipality, if justified.
There are also two levels of intercity zones.
In Intermunicipal zone I, there are three sub-areas: Barlavento and Sotavento Algarvios, with the municipalities that belong to each of these territorial units, and Central Algarve, an area that overlaps, in part, both Barlavento and to Sotavento.
There is also the Intermunicipal zone II, which has two areas: the union between the Barlavento and the Central Algarve and the junction of the latter with the Eastern Algarve.
The zoning has at the “top” the area called CIM, corresponding to the entire territory of the Algarve.
Now, it remains to define the price for each of the unique passes: the «numbers will still have to be fine-tuned», but they should not deviate too far from those practiced in Lisbon and Porto.
For this, it is necessary to create a model that does not punish the private partners, nor the municipalities, which have received the competence in terms of public transport from the Government.
“It cannot be only the municipalities that bear it. This is a competence that the State transferred to the municipalities. And the transfer of skills is not based on being a burden on the public purse», said António Pina.
“Money is coming through the Public Transport Fare Reduction Support Program (PART), but it is starting to not be enough and certainly will not be enough for this new model”, he added.
“But we believe that if things are well presented and there is a logic, there will be a great willingness on the part of the Government to review the funds, because we have entered another level of complexity and this motivates the change in the amounts to be attributed”, concluded the president of AMAL.
The memorandum was signed by António Pina, representatives of the municipal executives of Albufeira, Faro, Olhão, Tavira, Portimão and Loulé, and by David Pedrosa, director of Grupo Barraqueiro, representing the transport operators in the region Vizur, Eva, PXM, Translagos and Sandbus.
Photos: Hugo Rodrigues | Sul Informação
Comments