Skip to main content

Optibus software rolled out across buses in Brazil's Porto Alegre

First Latin American city to use firm's software to plan and schedule entire bus fleet
By Adam Hill September 14, 2023 Read time: 2 mins
City's bus network carries 114.6 million passengers annually

The city of Porto Alegre in Brazil has become the first in Latin America to use Optibus software to plan and schedule public transportation citywide.

Empresa Pública de Transporte e Circulação (EPTC - the Department of Urban Mobility within the Public Company of Transport and Circulation) says the solution, including the On-Time Performance feature, will be rolled out across the 11 transportation operators which manage Porto Alegre’s public bus network.

The network transports 114.6 million passengers annually, with 2.8 million bus trips per year, and Optibus’ cloud-native platform is expected to make compliance with regulatory requirements - such as service frequency and regularity - more transparent.

“This is another important step forward in our ‘More Transport’ programme, which, together with the daily analysis that we conduct, will be fundamental for us to continue improving public transportation and delivering better services to passengers,” said Adão de Castro Júnior, secretary of urban mobility of the city of Porto Alegre.

The modernisation will "enable our operators to reach new levels of operational quality, service reliability, and passenger satisfaction", says Tula Vardaramatos, president of the Association of Passenger Transporters (ATP), a non-profit entity that represents private bus companies operating in Porto Alegre.

"By partnering with ATP in Porto Alegre, we reaffirm our commitment to transforming public transportation and supporting transportation companies and regulatory bodies in their mission to offer high-quality, sustainable mobility across the city," said André Vieira, regional director of Optibus in Brazil.

Porto Alegre is the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Q&A: ‘It’s time to be honest about micromobility’
    April 10, 2025
    The micromobility market is in flux, cities are hitting back: so how can bike- and scooter-share providers move forward in a way that satisfies everyone? Adam Hill finds out…
  • Contactless payments introduced on London's buses
    December 14, 2012
    Bus passengers in London can now use their use their contactless debit, credit or charge card to touch in on the yellow Oyster card readers and pay the single Oyster fare on any of London's 8,500 buses. Introducing the scheme, Transport for London (TfL) says the new payment option will also be good news for the approximately 36,000 people per day who board a bus and find they have insufficient pay as you go balance on their Oyster to pay for their journey as they will be able to use the other card they may
  • First among equals
    May 21, 2012
    Dr Peter Sweatman, Director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) and the new chairman of ITS America, has no doubt where safety stands in the ITS world What do you hope to achieve in your term as chairman of ITS America? I really want to advance the agenda of safe and sustainable transportation because ITS really is the only weapon that can advance that. We have been working on connected vehicles for safety for a number of years, putting all of the right elements in place,
  • Sweating the asset
    May 22, 2012
    Technological progress has done many things for the good of mankind and, as is evident from this issue of ITS International, it has become fundamental for those needing to ‘sweat the asset’. You will not find that expression anywhere else in this issue, but you will discover a lot pointing to the crucial and expanding role for ITS in getting more out of existing infrastructure.IBM associate partner Michael Noblett puts this into context in our special smart cities feature starting on page 50. Noblett refers