Portugal

Overview in the National Level

In Portugal, AMP (Metropolitan Area of Porto) is working with native NeTEx, and we hope that other PTAs will soon join and start using it as well. AMP has made the most use of the validator. However, TML (Metropolitan Transports of Lisbon) and Carris (one of the largest PTOs in Portugal) have also used it to validate some information in NeTEx.

Regarding the use of the NAP, the number of users has been growing considerably, and the information available is very diverse. It includes public transportation (roadway and railway), electric charging points, Zones of Conditional Automobile Access (UVAR), loading and unloading zones, scooter parks, parking lots, Taxi ranks, bus lanes, passenger drop-off and pick-up zones, parking for bicycles, motorcycle parks, cycle paths, and other information.

Use cases

Description

Metropolitan Area of Porto

• Area: 2,041 km²
• Population: 1.76 million
• 76,000 university students (representing 20% of Portugal's university population)

As a Transport Authority, we are responsible for overseeing bus services operated by private companies. Our responsibilities include:

• Planning (routes, interconnections, frequencies, coverage, etc.)
• Establishing ticketing, fees, pricing, and regulations
• Managing contracts
• Handling payments related to contractual obligations (bonuses/penalties)
• Providing public information (indirectly, to other public or private entities that are better positioned to integrate the information)

To meet these requirements, the exchange of detailed information is essential. NeTEx has been chosen for data exchange between stakeholders due to its advantages:

• Comprehensive coverage of all transport system areas
• Object-oriented data model
• Version control mechanisms
• Supports transmission as both payload and file
• Compliant with the Portuguese NAP standard (IMT)
• A fully recognized European standard since 2006

Architecture

Our platform is built as a group of microservices, where information exchange between specialized applications is handled via NeTEx. It is possible to replace an application with a commercial, internal, or open-source solution, as long as it can export or import data in the NeTEx format.

Flux diagram of NeTEx exchange

Uses cases

PLIM is the name of our platform where all internal information is communicated by NeTEx and produce NETEX, GTFS, SIRI, GTFS-feed to National Access Points (NAP).

Outcome

Until whatever aspect that we want address is cover by NETEX to be the base of sharing information, no need of extensions, on use.

In future we hope that a wide cover transport information be available in NETEX and SIRI by collaborative sharing. With this information any company project or individual projects could develop applications to address global needs our particular interests.