The on-demand bus in Barcelona It began testing in 2019 and is already circulating in the neighborhoods of Torre Baró, Vallbona, Montbau, Vall d’Hebron, Farró and Galvany. The service in which vehicles move only if travelers require it through a application breaks with the regular passage of traditional lines. Pending expansion to more areas of the city, the balance of public transport on demand differs depending on where you look: Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) qualifies as “success” the first year of the circuit under request in Farró and Galvany, with an increase in passengers, while in Torre Baró there have been requests to reverse the route system for convenience and return to the method conventional.
The case of Farró and Galvany, in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, offers the positive side of the service. TMB charts draw a growth sustained demand, according to the latest available data: from May to September, it was above 800 validations each month and, after the holiday decline in August, it rose in September to exceed 1,000, about levels not seen in the first four months of 2023.
In total, 8,108 validations were registered between January 1 and September 30 on the line, with 1.24 passengers for each request. journey. The most frequent trips were to two health facilities, the Adrià Primary Care Center and the Plato Hospital.
The on-demand bus gives you the option to schedule the trip in advance or request it when you need it. The request without prior reservation has been the most common so far in Farró and Galvany, with 5,922 validations. According to TMB, the wait time for those trips not previously planned it was about 12.13 minutes.
Lack of coverage
The unfavorable face for the à la carte system is found in Torre Baró, in the district of Nou Barris. Complaints come from afar about delays waiting for a bus to cover a route just a few minutes in a neighborhood where unevenness and steep streets make public transportation essential. On some occasions, the application even warns of waits that are expected to last more than an hour.
Added the setback of the poor coverage on the southern flank of the neighborhood, with a handful of homes nestled at one end of the Sierra de Collserola: The lack of signal in certain areas causes the route to disappear from the bus’s GPS. Neighbors confess that they have had to guide more than one disoriented driver.
He discomfort The problems in the service were discussed this month in a neighborhood council. The Torre Baró Neighborhood Association proposed that the on-demand bus be reduced to the weekend and become a regular line from Monday to Friday, at least as long as two remedies are not applied to the inconveniences: the installation of antennas to expand coverage and build a roundabout in 2024, with which the Nou Barris district hopes to improve circulation fluidity. “The City Council said it accepted our idea, but no big changes are expected,” warns the president of the neighborhood entity, Valeria Ortiz.
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In the same sense, the PP has begged the district to set a date for the return of the traditional bus until the incidents are resolved. The popular advocate that the bus pick up all the people who are at the stops, regardless of whether they have made a reservation or not. The conservatives propose that, at most, a pilot test of on-demand routes on Saturdays and Sundays, but on condition of reimplementing the conventional bus network beforehand.
Ortiz criticizes that “there is no plan B” to the current method at convenience. “We do not have a date for them to set repeaters nor for them to make the roundabout, although we do not believe that the waiting time will decrease,” he suspects. She believes that the system is “non-viable” in part of Torre Baró: “In the northern area, the on-demand bus came to add, because there is a regular line. But in the south, there is only a bus on demand. You don’t know if tomorrow you’re going to have a fever and you’re going to need it to go to the hospital. CHAP. There are people who set alarms so that they don’t miss out on ordering the bus in advance and it doesn’t get taken away, but you can’t always book it in advance because you don’t know what’s going to happen. “It’s never going to work in that part of the neighborhood.”