CP – Comboios de Portugal assured this Friday that validators are not needed to integrate Vouga Line into the Andante ticketing system, as reviewers can validate on board, an official source told Lusa.
“The absence of validators is not and never has been an obstacle to the integration of Vouga Line into the Andante system,” the official source of CP Lusa said in a response.
Lusa posed the question to CP after the Transportes Intermodalis do Porto (TIP) group, which operates Andante, indicated that it would be able to integrate this ticketing system on the Vouga line “within approximately four weeks from the installation of CP”. Validators”.
“TIP is also looking to find a solution to help CP and install onboard validators, even if they are on loan,” can also be read in the Andante Lusa Management Group’s response posted on Thursday.
Today, a CP official replied that on-train inspection and sales operators are “properly equipped with EPVC (Portable Sales and Control Equipment) that allows inspection on board (similar to what happens on the Douro line, in apiadeiro without a validator), which makes checking on the platform unnecessary.”
“We have already formalized a request to integrate this section into the Andante system with TIP and are currently waiting for the decision of this organization,” Lusa concludes in his response to CP.
CP is one of the companies of the TIP group (owns 33.3% of the share capital, along with Metro do Porto and STCP), whose chairman of the board is currently Pedro Ribeiro, namely a member of the management of CP.
However, the current management of TIP has been delegated to a managing director, in this case Manuel Paulo Teixeira, from 2022.
The absence of the Vouga Line in the Andante system prevents, for example, frequent passengers from using the Andante metropolitan pass on the train, with a corresponding increase in costs (89 euros for two passes instead of 40 for a single one) to travel to Porto.
At present, the regional CP service on the Vuga line in the Porto metropolitan area (AMP), which Andante can serve, covers the municipalities of Oliveira de Azemeis, São João da Madeira, Santa Maria da Feira and Espinho.
The journey between Oliveira de Azemeis and Espinho takes over an hour, and the Espinho Vouga station is about 500m from the Espinho station on the Northern Line, served by CP suburban buses with links to Porto and Aveiro, as well as long-distance trains.
JE//LIL
Lusa/The End