According to Marco Martins, the pilot project will last four months and will have a boat with a capacity for 20 people, which will connect the two banks of the Douro River every hour, in each direction.

The service begins at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, in Afurada, and there are scheduled to be “13 trips in each direction from Monday to Thursday, 15 trips on Friday, 13 on Saturday and 11 on Sunday,” he specified, clarifying that these connections may be subject to adjustments if demand for river transport increases.

The trips will end at 8 p.m. from Monday to Thursday. From Friday to Sunday, the last boat will leave the pier at 10 p.m.

Each trip “lasts about seven minutes, when by car, on a day with no traffic, it lasts between 20 and 30 minutes and by public transport about 50 minutes,” he highlighted.

The president of TMP said that being able to launch this pilot project on the eve of the São Pedro da Afurada festivities (taking place on the night of Saturday to Sunday) was “a race,” considering that the city governments of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia returned this responsibility to the Porto Metropolitan Area on May 29.

This connection - which will be available until the end of October - will also serve to conduct “a real study of demand”.

TMP intends to understand the potential flow of this connection, both for residents of the two cities and for tourists, in order to later “launch a competition” for this river crossing.

In addition to being able to use the Andante pass (metropolitan and municipal) and the Andante Z2, there will be a ticket on board, costing 2.25 euros.

The crossing between Cais do Ouro and Afurada, carried out by the vessel Flor do Gás, was suspended in 2020, but the crossing was resumed in the summer of 2022, on an exceptional basis, during the festivities of São Pedro and the Marés Vivas Festival.