The Competition Authority (AdC) gave the ‘green light’ to Porto Mobilidade, which results from a concentration of transport companies, which includes the Transdev Group, winners of the tender for the concession of a lot of the public tender for buses for the Metropolitan Area of Porto.
“The concentration operation results from the award by the Metropolitan Area of Porto (AMP) of the provision of the public service of regular passenger transport, by road, in the territorial unit ‘Norte West’ (Lot 3), to Porto Mobilidade , Empresa de Transportes Públicos Ltda. (‘Porto Mobilidade’), within the framework of the public tender” launched for the “acquisition of the public road passenger transport service of AMP”, says the AdC, in a publication released this Wednesday .
According to the publication, the board of directors of the AdC decided to “adopt a decision not to oppose the concentration operation (…), since it is not susceptible to create significant obstacles to effective competition in the national market or in a substantial part of it“.
At stake is the award of lot 3 – or “Norte Poente” lot – of the public tender for road transport in the Porto Metropolitan Area (AMP), which includes connections to Vila do Conde and Póvoa de Varzim.
The concentration of companies that won this tender for this concession is called “Porto Mobilidade, Empresa de Transportes Públicos, Lda.” and integrates Auto Viação do Minho, a bus station in Minho that competed in consortium with Transdev (Minho Bus) and Litoral Norte.
According to the AdC, Porto Mobilidade is “a company of the Transdev Group created to participate in the tender and execution of the concession contract for the operation of the public passenger road transport service in the AMP.”
“The Transdev Group operates, in Portugal, among others, in the sector of heavy road transport of passengers and goods”, reads the file of the process that accompanies the publication of the AdC.
According to documents consulted by Lusa, the company proposed a price of 1.47 euros per kilometer and a fleet of 19 vehicles with Euro IV emissions class, three Euro V vehicles and 48 Euro VI vehicles, according to the proposal documents.
AMP launched, in January 2020, the public tender for the concession of the public passenger transport service in 16 municipalities, organized in five lots, with the exception of Porto, where the Sociedade de Transportes Coletivos de Passageiros (STCP) operates exclusively.
There are 35 bus lines planned for Vila do Conde and 11 for Póvoa de Varzim.
It is a public tender worth 394 million euros, awarded for 307.6 million.
The public tender for AMP’s private bus operators puts an end to a line-by-line concession model inherited from 1948 and contemplates a new standardized network of 439 lines, including the Andante ticket, with the bus fleet having to present “a common image in the entire territory” of the amp
However, the president of the Porto Metropolitan Council, Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues, has already stated that in some lots that were tendered (a total of five) “there is the possibility of revising the network by up to 10%”.
On September 12, on the sidelines of a meeting of the council of Vila Nova de Gaia, a municipality chaired by Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues, the leader of the AMP stated that the new bus network in the region will be “guaranteed” in operation during the year. .
Source: Observadora
