Portugal’s Metro do Porto is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. The prize recognizes the infrastructure project’s positive contribution to the world heritage city of Porto and the quality of life of its people by connecting previously segregated communities.

Together with consortium partners, Bombardier Transportation was responsible for the delivery of a full turnkey light rail system for Metro do Porto. This included the manufacture of more than 100 Bombardier Flexity light rail vehicles, project management, in-house design, installation and commissioning of a Bombardier Cityflo 250 rail control solution.

The system, in operation since 2002, connects seven municipalities in the metropolitan area of Porto and interconnects with the city's bus and railway networks. It transports approximately 55 million passengers annually, a number that has grown steadily year on year. The system has four lines with 63 overground and 14 underground stations.

It combines mixed traffic sections, separate full signaling sections with tunnels and single line sections equipped with passing loops and block signaling. Seventy-two Flexity 100% low-floor trams and 30 Flexity light rail vehicles provide a total capacity of more than 20,000 passengers per hour per direction.

The future success of urban centers rests on re-defining the way people move within and between these expanding social and economic hubs. To sustain economic growth while ensuring the health and quality of life of citizens, cities all over the world are looking for smarter and more environmentally friendly forms of mass transit compared to the historic dependence on individual car transportation.

Bombardier is at the forefront of developing cost-effective technologies that improve total vehicle performance to move more people and goods than ever before efficiently within and between urban centers.

The modes of seamless urban transportation developed by Bombardier include trams, metros and innovative electric mobility solutions for electric rail and road vehicles, while its state-of-the-art rail control solutions reduce the constraints of current networks.