Government Targets a National Intermodal Transport Pass Linking Lisbon and Porto by Year's End
Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz says a single pass valid across buses, metros and trains in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas — together about 80% of national transport supply — could arrive by the end of 2026. The main hurdles are technical: reconciling different ticketing systems an
A single travel pass that works across buses, metros and trains in both of Portugal's largest urban regions could be a reality before the end of the year, according to the government minister responsible for transport. Miguel Pinto Luz, who oversees infrastructure and mobility, said this week that a national intermodal pass linking the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto is now his department's goal for 2026 — a step that would knit together two ticketing systems currently used by millions of commuters.
What is being promised
The idea is a pass that a traveller could use seamlessly across operators and modes in and between the two metropolitan regions, rather than juggling separate tickets and top-ups for each network. Pinto Luz framed it as the next stage in a broader push to simplify public-transport fares, telling reporters that the aim is to have, by the end of the year, "a new pass with the two metropolitan areas interconnected." Together, he noted, Greater Lisbon and Greater Porto account for roughly 80% of the country's public-transport supply, so a scheme covering both would reach the great majority of Portuguese passengers.
The plumbing is the hard part
The obstacles are less political than technical and financial. The two metropolitan networks — and the dozens of operators within them — run on different software platforms, fare rules and validation systems, which must be reconciled before a common pass can function. Just as thorny is the money: each operator has to be compensated for the journeys taken under a shared ticket, a redistribution exercise (perequação) that has to be calculated fairly across every carrier and route. The minister acknowledged as much, pointing to "different softwares, rules, and many operators who have to be reimbursed" as the puzzle his teams are working through.
Encouragingly for the project, Pinto Luz said the political groundwork is largely in place, reporting alignment across parties and a constructive dialogue with the municipalities and intermunicipal bodies whose cooperation any national pass would require.
Building on the green pass
The announcement extends a strategy the government began in October 2024 with the green rail pass, a €20 monthly ticket valid for 30 days on a defined set of rail services and marketed as a low-cost, low-carbon way to travel the country. That scheme has proved popular, with more than a million passes sold by April 2026 — evidence, ministers argue, of pent-up demand for simpler, cheaper and more integrated fares.
What remains conspicuously absent is a price. Pinto Luz has not said how much a national intermodal pass would cost, nor exactly how it would be funded, and past experience with heavily discounted schemes such as the metropolitan passes suggests that the headline figure will be decisive for take-up. For now the commitment is a target rather than a launch date, but for commuters who routinely move between Portugal's two biggest cities, the prospect of a single ticket to cover the journey is a welcome one.
