The new metropolitan bus network is due to start operating this year, with the single UNIR brand, but the current operators that lost the public tender are refusing to enter into partnerships, according to the president of Área Metropolitana do Porto
Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues, who also heads the Municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia, said at the end of a meeting of the municipal executive that "the current operators will cease to operate because they lost a clean and transparent tender and because they refused to make partnerships, which is the simple way of saying that they refused to work under a subcontracting regime, with the winning companies".
The start of the new metropolitan bus network is planned for this year, which will operate under the brand UNIR in the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area except for Porto, where Sociedade de Transportes Coletivos do Porto (STCP) has exclusive rights.
The appearance of the new image comes in the wake of the €394 million public tender that ends a model of line-by-line concessions inherited from 1948 and covers a new standardised network of 439 lines, including the Andante ticket, with the bus fleet to present "a common image throughout the territory".
The current operators will no longer operate in their entirety due to a management option, the mayor of VN Gaia pointed out.
According to Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues, the possibility of the current operators to continue to work, but in a subcontracting regime for the companies that won the tender was a good solution because it would allow them not to lose "all their service from one day to the other".
The mayor said that he found out about this because several operators informed AMP of this decision.