The Interreg Europe monitoring committee approved the request for pilot action submitted by the CISMOB project (PGI01611) at the meeting in Sofia on 13 March 2018. The pilot action will be implemented in the second phase of the CISMOB project.

Promotion of real-time information systems on public transport is a key measure included in the action plan for PI1. The exchange of experience and interregional cooperation process that occurred during the first phase of CISMOB has contributed to the increase of interest and awareness on ICT of the regional stakeholders and, for that reason, there is willingness to use the funds available by the PI1 (CENTRO 2020).

In a first step of the pilot action, a prototype will be developed consisting of a bus tracking system for locating the position of a bus on its route in real-time. This information will be transmitted to a central server where the information in real time will be managed and re-transmitted to different platforms. In a second step, customers and non-customers will be invited to evaluate the dissemination of public transport service through different centralized (eg. Smartphone apps) and decentralized platforms (monitors in bus stops).

The pilot-action will contribute to demonstrate the added value of Real-Time Public Information systems, to assess the best approaches to provide real-time bus information from the citizens perspective, to provide a more accurate estimation regarding the amount required for a potential financial support from the ERDF and contribute to better governance by including new criteria for evaluating projects submitted to the thematic call.

The prototype will be tested in different public transportation services of the CENTRO Region, namely in the municipality of Cantanhede and Coimbra Region. On April 18, the LP team met with the representatives of the Intermunicipal Community of Coimbra and the municipality of Cantanhede to discuss the first steps of the implementation of the pilot action.