Porto Metro Explained
Hello Metro
As tourists for the first time in Porto back in 2009, we found Porto’s metro to be a breath of fresh air (figuratively and literally). Back then, the Metro was pretty new, appealing to the eye, and a lot of stations above ground. This was in stark contrast to other rapid mass transportation that we were used to.
My wife (Kalie) and I started living abroad in 2009 as we moved from the US to Madrid, Spain. Metro Madrid was fine. In fact, compared to other forms of inner-city train travel, it was great! Except lines 1 and 2. We both had experience in the New York Subway, the London Underground (Tube), Rome Metro, and Paris Metro to name a few.
Porto’s metro gave us a different feel when we first arrived at Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO) and took line E, the purple line, from the airport into Trindade Station. The journey took about 25 minutes and gave us a wonderful impression of the area as the bulk of the trip was at ground level. You could see slight changes in the surrounding areas outside of each station and possibly what kind of residents were in each neighborhood by who got on and off the train.
Porto Metro as a Tourist
We were tourists then and not residents of the city of Porto. We had tourist passes for the few days we were in Porto, which gave us access to all forms of public transportation via our Andante tourist card that lasted 72 hours from first tap (current price is €7 for 24 hours and €15 for 72 hours). Because we had these cards, we didn’t really worry or wonder about the “zones” or “titles”.
Explaining Metro Porto (or at least trying)
Allow me to explain. A “title” is essentially a ride. It’s also the classification of the ride and that’ll be by zone, which affects the price. Confused yet? Don’t be.
All metro stations have signage in English and all of the machines have a button to select English settings.
Now, back to zones. The Porto area is divided into 12 zones for their 6 metro lines (there are plans and work is underway for a new metro line…more on that later). The zones were subdivided by North (N-Norte), Central (C-Centro), South (S-Sur), but are now classified by the actual name of the municipality. For example, there are 3 zones in the city of Porto which are PRT 1, PRT 2, PRT3. Matosinhos has a single zone called MTS 1. Vila Nova de Gaia has one called VNG 1. So why is this important? Well, it’s not. At least not really.
What you should be focusing on is this… What station are you starting your journey and what station are you ending your journey? Your origin and destination will dictate what “title” your card should be and that’ll affect your price. Your origin station is z1 so let’s say that you’re starting at the central Metro station called Trindade where all metro lines meet. This single zone (PRT 1) has 16 individual stations and is the most densely packed zone in the system. Since this is your starting point it’s z1. There is no z1 title (read as ticket) , the first title is z2, which means that you can travel to any zone that’s adjacent or touching your zone of origin. There are 3 zones that around PRT 1. So that would give you access to another 16 stations around Metro Porto all for the price of €1.20 for a single journey.
So how about getting to Matosinhos? Well in that case, you would need a z3 “title” because it’s not touching your first zone and you’d have to pass through a 2nd zone to get to it. How much will a z3 set you back? €1.60 for a single journey.
Bulk Rides
What if you don’t want to pay for single rides? Well, you have a few options. If you’re like me and my wife, we like to walk with our baby daughter so we don’t take the metro but once or twice a week. In that case, we find it better to load our Andante card (name of the transportation system network) with 10 “titles” at a time. When you pay for 10 at a time, you get 1 free so the machine will read 10+1. Another option as a resident is to get an Andante Gold card (€6 for the card itself) and pay a monthly fee, which will depend on where you want access to.
If you want more of an explanation on Metro Porto, with a little more audio and visual appeal, we’ve created a video on our Youtube channel where we take you on a quick mission and explain the Metro while showing how things work and the station stops we have.
