Mobility

What do a mathematician and an architect get up to together? In the case of Ricardo Reis and Nuno Lopes, they have created a route calculator for public transport routes in Portugal. They include all vehicles in it and offer people the possibility of coordinating timetables in order to reduce waiting times. Formed following a competition by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the aim of solving social problems in Portugal, the company Mais Perto set up the project TransportesPúblicos.PT. Here, you can find different means of transport – road, rail or river –including tourist lifts and urban buses. You can …

To tell the story of SolarImpulse – the first solar aero plane project – we have to begin seven years ago in Switzerland. Here the idea was born. This summer the initiators and pilots André Borschberg and Bernard Piccard flew with it across the USA covering more than 5.600 km despite being confronted with heavy weather challenges. SolarImpulse, the first airplane ever to fly day and night on solar energy only, proved the reliability and efficiency of clean technologies and renewable energies. SolarImpulse took advantage of Switzerland’s long tradition of technological innovation, research and entrepreneurial excellence. Over the centuries this …

When I was a student in Lisbon in the early nineties a friend of mine cycled down from the north of Spain to the capital. It was July. All the Portuguese in the villages were sitting in the shade of fig trees and bus shelters, watching the world go by when along came this red in the face, dripping wet, young man on a mountain bike. They looked on in bemusement, shook their heads and generally agreed that he was ‘maluco’. Even my Portuguese partner’s father was puzzled and asked, ‘Couldn’t he afford the bus?’ Times change. Portugal is now …