Antwerp Travel Forum

I lived in Antwerp for six months in 1972 and public transportation was good enough but there was not an underway system yet. After my stay studying pcm systems at Bell Telephone I visited several european cities. Eleven years later I visited Milan for three months and found there was a very interesting public transportation system where tickets had a fix time limit after the initial trip. Time duration was 75 minutes and you could take any trip in any system while ticket was alive, with the exception of metro where just one trip was allowed. The ticket was marked just one time in the very initial trip and in case time duration was completed while in transit, you were obliged to mark a new ticket. Bus or tram drivers didn't care about this problem and they were not allowed to sell tickets. You had to by them at the metro stations or newspaper stands. This obligation was checked by inspectors visits to the buses and they were very strict with cheaters, keeping their Id card and giving a date ticket for a trial or the payment of ten times the amount of the ticket.

Being both systems so similar, would like to know if there is certain relation with the italian organization.

There is no reason why there would be, many cities have developed something similar. When I lived in Geneva more than 30 years ago they already had this system (ticket valid for 60 minutes travel, had to be bought from machine or newsagent in advance of travel) and it is common in Italian cities, large and small (e.g. Brescia).
The system in Brussels is similar, although you can still at the moment - pending installation of more ticket machines at bus and tram stops - buy individual tickets from the driver: but these cost more (€2 instead of €1.50), to persuade people to buy them in advance so that a) the driver doesn't waste time selling tickets and b) there is less money on board to make them a target for petty criminals.

This system is quite common also in Germany.