Providing a coordinated and integrated response for the needs of Madrid

The Spanish State is organised on the basis of a Central Government – 17 Auto­nomous Regions with wide-ranging powers at the regional level and Municipalities which represent towns and villages at the local level. Madrid is one of the Autonomous Regions and is composed of 179 Municipalities.

The total population of the city of Madrid is 3.2 million inhabitants, accounting for 51.2% of the total population of the region. The central core of Madrid is home to 31.3% of this population and provides a large proportion of the region’s jobs.

The total number of journeys made during a single working day in the region of Madrid was recorded at 15.2 million (according to the last Household Mobility Survey). These journeys are distributed more or less equally between the three major modes of transport – 31.1% are made on foot, 34% use public transport and 34.9% are made in private vehicles.

The most important reasons for trav­- elling are the mandatory ones of work (37.1%) and study (19.3%). Non-mandatory mobility accounts for 43.6% of the total – which would indicate that the purposes for making journeys are increasingly varied. The issue of mobility is, therefore, gradually becoming more complex.

In terms of motorised transport, public transport is used slightly less than private (around 50% in each case). Nonetheless, if we look at the modes used in terms of the geographical area, the picture is quite different:

• In Madrid, city public transport pre­dominates – accounting for 64% of mobility, or two in three journeys
• In radial movements between Madrid and the metropolitan and regional rings, public and private transport plays a more or less equal role, as in the overall picture
• Inside the metropolitan and regional rings, public transport accounts for only 26% of journeys in a sector that is showing the greatest growth in mobility

The public transport system for the region of Madrid is a complex inter-modal system, consisting of various modes of transport: city and suburban buses, metro, light-rail and suburban rail services. The following two large subsystems can be detected:

• The urban area of the city of Madrid: around 200 EMT city bus routes, 13 underground lines and one light-rail line, and 30 sub­urban train stations
• Metropolitan area of the region: 100 city bus routes, over 300 suburban lines, four underground lines and three LRT lines

The demand for public transport in 2009 was in the order of 1.6 billion journeys. The average of 255 journeys per inhabitant places the region of Madrid among the most frequent public transport users, both in Spain and Europe.

CRTM as the public transport authority in the region

The Regional Transport Consortium (CRTM) was founded by the Madrid Regional Government under Law 5/1985 of 16 May, just two short years after the creation of the region of Madrid itself.

As an Autonomous Body of the Regional Government, its responsibilities cover the planning of public transport infrastructures and services, creation of an integrated fare system and an overall image of the system to the inhabitants of the entire region of Madrid and associated municipalities. Since its origin, CRTM’s pillars have been set around three success milestones, including: administrative integration, modal integration and fare integration. The 21st century has also seen the introduction of a new challenge – technological integration.

Public Transport Management Centre

CRTM is developing an Integrated Collective Public Transport Management Centre, a ‘big brain’ that will coordinate the information on infrastructure and services of the different modes of transportation that operate in the region in real-time. This centre will be the first in Europe to receive and manage specific infor­mation on all incidents that occur in each one of the modes of transport.

This innovative system will provide two important benefits: on the one hand, users will be able to receive information on the status of the lines that they are going to use with enough time to allow them to plan the route that is best for them, and on the other hand, the CRTM (as the Public Transport Authority in the region) will be able to make decisions faster and more effectively when coordinating the operation of the whole transport system. This project has been executed in several phases. For the first step, the region of Madrid, through the CRTM, implemented a control centre in the Moncloa Interchange to supervise operation and coordinate information from the four new transport interchanges built between 2004 and 2008 (Moncloa, Príncipe Pío, Plaza Elíptica and Plaza Castilla) and the more than 120 bus lines that arrive and depart to and from them.

Over the course of 2008, the functions of this centre were expanded and it now, in addition, coordinates the status of the three light-rail lines and the Parla tramway, with a total of 36km opened by the middle of 2007.

After the positive results obtained following the integration of the light-rail network, the final step was taken, initiating the integration of the Metro network and the urban bus lines of the EMT, making this control centre the first in Spain to manage an entire transport system.

With this goal in mind, in 2009, work began to develop the necessary systems integration in the local control centres of these important modes of transportation to allow them to send the information to the Integrated Collective Public Transport Management Centre regarding:

• Operation Management
• Security and Safety Management
• Maintenance Management
• Incidents/Crisis Management

The next step will be to receive the status information from the commuter rail services, as well as the status of the main highway accesses and streets of Madrid, becoming an Integrated Mobility Management Centre.

Advantages for users

The system makes it possible to analyse the status of public transport as a whole and to provide a coordinated and integrated response to the needs of the passengers. Thanks to this centre, for example, the user information screens for the different modes of transportation (metro, urban buses, suburban railways, transport interchanges, etc.) are conceived as parts of a single multi-modal information system, which allows them to display information regarding the operation of all of different lines of the public transport system and offer alternatives if any of the infrastructure is not operating at full capacity at a given time. Transport users will also be able to receive e-mails or text messages with updated information on any incidents on the lines that they normally use. This centre, which will operate 24 hours a day, also manages compliance with service time­tables, monitoring via TV cameras, and the proper functioning of all of the installations, such as elevators, escalators, HVAC, or fans, in order to guarantee high-quality service for citizens. Finally, this centre will coordinate actions related to incidents that may occur in the public transport system, executing the established procedures in the corre­sponding coordination mechanisms with the 112 Regional Emergency Centres, which may require the presence of ambulances, the Fire Department, Police, etc. depending on the circumstances.

Supporting Madrid’s economy

This project will undoubtedly constitute an important element in Madrid’s economy, as it will be the only big metropolitan area with a centre of these set of capabilities, which are so crucial for optimum management of mobility and large events.