Public transport schedule: instability and challenges

It has become an increasingly frequent debate: the instability of public transport timetables in the city - or even outside it, in surrounding areas - creates significant disruption for those seeking more agile and efficient mobility, whether for leisure journeys or, more commonly, commuting from home to work and back again. 

There is also individual and paid passenger transport, but this brings a new issue: it does not provide complete freedom because, among other constraints, it does not always cover the entire territory or operate in sufficient numbers.

It therefore becomes clear that options such as car hire are increasingly sought after, as they restore complete freedom of scheduling to their users. But we will come to that shortly. First, let us address public transport timetables and their constraints.

The public transport network is complex in any city in the world. In Portugal, it is no different, and there are even, with some regularity, shortcomings regarding timetable compliance. Indeed, this recurring issue with public transport timetables - such as buses, the underground and trains - makes daily mobility more difficult for the population.

This challenge is compounded, in many cases, by the lack of connections between different forms of public transport, rendering certain areas of the city or industrial locations far from urban centres inaccessible. In essence, a journey that could take 20 minutes can easily double in duration or more. To this must, of course, be added the return journey. A phenomenon that causes delays, irritability and frustration for families, students and workers.

If delays are already a difficult obstacle to overcome, the inflexibility of public transport timetables is no less problematic. There are numerous cases in which, after a certain hour, services stop operating, making it necessary to resort to individual mobility options, often at considerable expense. If this situation occurs regularly, workers and students will be affected on an even greater scale.

In such contexts, one inevitability arises: rigid and detrimental adaptation to a timetable that reduces the ability to manage one’s own time. As a result, little time remains for family life and leisure moments. An alternative therefore emerges that helps to address all these shortcomings: hiring a car.