Shotl’s first inner-city service in Lisbon

Not wanting to be left behind as cities worldwide begin to transform their public transport from fixed-route-and-schedule lines to on-demand, the transport authority of Lisbon launched its own DRT system. It was our privilege to carry out the project and thus strengthen our relationship with the portuguese public transport operator Carris, with whom Shotl already cooperated in 2019 during a six-month pilot test for an on demand accessible transport service.

On this occasion, the chosen location was an area that comprises Avenidas Novas as well as Campolide and São Domingos de Benfica, 100% in the central part of Lisbon. It is an area of straight streets laid out in grid formation, very different from the old town of Lisbon with its steep slopes and torturous twisting streets.

One of the peculiarities of this operation is the degree of precision that traditional geolocation systems offer. In the deployment area, many streets have two central lanes with a separation in the middle, as well as side lanes. In a case like this, precision accuracy is essential, even more so than, for example, in a rural or peri-urban setting. Shotl systems are constantly working to meet this challenge.

The operation in Lisbon has 61 virtual stops in an area of ​​almost 3 km², active from Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. for Ride Now services. During this time, users can request the service through Xbus, the white label app developed by Shotl. In addition, there is a map for passengers to view the location of vehicles in real-time, when accessing the Xbus site created by Carris.

This was Shotl's first launch in the center of a large capital city, consolidating the technology company as a provider of mobility solutions in any environment, be it rural, suburban, peri-urban or, in this case, 100% urban.