A bit more than a year ago, on 19 December 2024, the SMART BUS project was launched in Madrid; one year later it has now reached its provisional conclusion.
The project involved a new on-demand public transport service, i.e. operated upon specific request by users, in the northern districts of Pilar, Arroyo del Fresno, Mirasierra, Montecarmelo and Tres Olivos in the Spanish capital.
Unlike similar schemes in other cities, two 14 years old midibuses operated by the municipal transport company Empresa Municipal de Transporte (EMT) were deployed, rather than minibuses or large-capacity taxis. Journeys were requested via a newly developed dedicated app, through which users could specify their desired route and departure time. However, only existing EMT bus stops within the service area were served – so it was not a genuine “door-to-door” solution. In practice, though, the density of stops provided by various regular EMT bus routes in the selected districts is already quite high, meaning passengers never have far to walk to the nearest bus stop.
Additional passengers could board without prior booking at the respective departure stop if they happened to require the same route and purchased a valid ticket or already held a season or multi-journey ticket. Even when combining different trip segments, the buses were only very rarely occupied by more than one or two passengers under this operating model – despite a total capacity of 13 seated and 35 standing passengers. Up to five people could be booked via the app for the same journey, although this also occurred only infrequently in practice.
Public acceptance of the new service remained limited. This may have been due in part to the extensive network of bus and metro services already available in the area, but probably also to the lack of integration into EMT’s standard, widely used app. Instead, potential users had to install a separate app and register again. As a result, it was difficult for customers to directly compare the service with EMT’s regular scheduled offerings.
The midibuses used – Breda Menarini Vivacity GNC vehicles, of which EMT had procured a total of 30 units in 2011 – have since largely been withdrawn from service.
