São Paulo Government to Launch Cooperative App for Bus, Train, and Subway Routes

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The São Paulo State government plans to launch an App in 2020 that provides subway, train, and bus routes, as well as micro-mobility options such as shared bicycles. Why is this different from Google Maps or Citymapper, for instance? The Secretary of Metropolitan Transport invests in cooperative alerts to warn if a CPTM (São Paulo Metropolitan Train Company) line is stopped or if a vehicle is dirty.

The App, provisionally called STM App, was introduced this week at the Summit Tembici event. It will include São Paulo’s public transports – bus, subway, and train – and micro-mobility systems, displaying the cost of the trip and estimated time.

These features can already be found in other Apps: for instance, Google Maps displays Lime scooters as a transport option, as well as the Itaú Bike (Bike Sampa and Bike Rio) and CicloSampa shared bikes. Uber is also incorporating bus, train, and subway routes in São Paulo.

The difference in the STM App would lie in the alerts that passengers may provide in the App: “it will be cooperative, similar to Waze; from this App, we will have a real insight into this system and we will be able to charge the concessionaires and service providers,” explained Danilo Ferreira Gomes, president of the board of EMTU (Metropolitan Urban Transport Company of São Paulo).

Moovit already allows people to report if a line is too crowded, if the vehicle is dirty or if the bus has not stopped. The STM App would provide similar data to monitor the quality of services and to monitor public transportation companies. It should also help in the development of a quarterly report to understand the use of public transport in São Paulo.

A bill in the federal Chamber of Deputies wants cities throughout Brazil with over 50,000 inhabitants to provide an App with information on public transport, including available lines, times and vehicle locations.

The App should allow users to grade the quality of buses and services provided. PL 9.865/2018 was approved by the CDC (Consumer Protection Committee) in the Chamber of Deputies and has been in the CVT (Traffic and Transportation Committee) since August 2019.

São Paulo is expected to host a transport App in February 2020

The STM App is scheduled to be launched in mid-February 2020. Gomes also mentioned that the development team plans to offer open APIs (Application Programming Interface) in the future so that other Apps will have access to data from the secretariat.

The Metropolitan Transportation Secretariat of SP lists the following features of the STM App:

• multimodal route involving integration between bus, subway, and train, with trip costs and expected arrival;
• cooperative alerts posted by users about issues in a bus line or subway train;
• notification to advise the best time to leave;
• warnings about operational occurrences such as failure in a subway line, with suggestions of alternative routes;
• feeds from official accounts on Twitter, such as Metro, CPTM (train) and EMTU (inter-municipal bus).

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