Lisbon, April 9, 2025 (Lusa) - Public transport operators in Lisbon report few complaints about accessibility, but guarantee that they are working to improve services.
Anyone who uses public transport on a daily basis encounters broken lifts and escalators and a regular lack of audible information, which has an impact on everyone's life, but especially on those with reduced mobility.
Lusa followed the journeys of three people in this situation, who used the metro, train and bus, and then questioned the main public transport companies in Lisbon about the accessibility of the services they provide.
The Lisbon Metro leads the complaints, with 525 complaints about escalators and 420 about lifts in 2024, more than in the previous year. "This increase is mainly due to the growth in the number of pieces of equipment temporarily inoperable due to replacement and modernisation work," the company explains in a response to Lusa.
Even so, it points out, in 2024 the lifts had an average availability rate of 85%.
As of 18 February, nine Metro stations had "areas without sound, hindering the transmission of audio messages to passengers", which is "essentially due to the age of the equipment and the consequent hardware failures, the repair of which has been conditioned by the difficulty in obtaining and sourcing replacement parts".
The ongoing modernisation plan foresees that, by 2026, 93% of Metro stations will have full accessibility.
Currently, customers ask an employee at the station entrance to use the ramp. The staff member will initiate the necessary procedures so that, at the destination, another employee is waiting for the passenger with the ramp ready to facilitate exiting the train. "With the entry into service of the new rolling stock, this need will be eliminated, since the new trains will have the floor levelled with the platform, allowing electric wheelchairs to board and alight without additional assistance (manual wheelchair users do not need ramps to access the trains)," the company points out.
Carris, Lisbon's public road transport service, receives an average of 160 complaints every year about the maintenance or breakdown of access ramps - a situation that Lusa verified on the ground, accompanying a man travelling in an electric wheelchair.
The transport company recognises "the existence of occasional situations involving this equipment", guaranteeing that "it is very committed to improving accessibility conditions" and that it is "implementing more agile and frequent internal inspection procedures".
According to Carris, the entire fleet of buses and trams has a lowered floor, but there are still 20% that don't have an access ramp. This "older fleet" is ‘progressively’ coming out of operation and all acquisitions take accessibility into account, the company said.
Carris also has a special service of five converted buses, to which another three should be added by 2028, a service that requires prior booking.
Carris Metropolitana, the public road transport network for the entire Lisbon Metropolitan Area, guarantees that 99.3% of the more than 1,600 vehicles it operates are equipped with ramps or similar systems, which are "practically fully operational".
In addition, "all the vehicles in the fleet" are equipped with audio information inside, which announces the approach of stops. Regarding the fact that Lusa travelled with a blind person on a bus with the audio information switched off, the company attributed the responsibility for activating this system to the driver of the vehicle.
Also in response to Lusa, Transportes Metropolitanos de Lisboa (TML), which coordinates the metropolitan area's public transport network and owns the Carris Metropolitana brand, said that it is working on an accessibility plan for people with disabilities, which is currently in the diagnostic phase.
In 2024, TML registered 24,038 complaints, 83 of which were about accessibility, with only eight "directly related to reduced mobility".
The company guarantees that it exerts ‘pressure’ on the operators responsible for making ramps operational and that it monitors the transport service on the ground.
With regard to external sound warnings, which would facilitate accessibility for people who are blind or have low vision, TML refers to the ‘strict limits’ on noise emissions in public spaces.
CP - Comboios de Portugal, the country's passenger train operator, received 20 complaints in 2024, the year in which the number of stations with mobility access increased from 139 to 216. However, it recognises "occasional faults in the sound warning system" on board the carriages, which "have been identified".
The Integrated Mobility Service - which requires prior booking (at least six hours in advance) for people in wheelchairs and is restricted to "stations and trains that are already adapted for this purpose" - registered 4,657 requests in 2024, an increase of 27% on the previous year.
In response to Lusa, CP pointed out its intention to "reduce and eliminate the need for pre-booking in the future".
On long-distance routes, the Alfa Pendular service only has two seats per train for wheelchair users, while the Intercidades only transports people in manual wheelchairs and "as long as the chair can be closed".
As for access to platforms, Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP - the country's infrastructure management company) is responsible for providing an answer: based on data collected on 14 February, 12 pieces of electromechanical equipment, out of a total of 471, were at a standstill, "with a breakdown of more than five days".
Estimating a failure rate of 2.5% in lifts, the company attributes "99% of the problems" in this equipment to "misuse and acts of vandalism".
In 2024, IP received 55 complaints about accessibility at stations or platforms, around 5% of the total number of complaints about the railway service.
In addition to this transport, there are 50 taxis licensed by the Lisbon city council (CML) to transport people with reduced mobility (among the more than 3,000 taxis in the city).
However, the taxi operators stress the lack of inspection of their licences and the Portuguese Taxi Federation (FPT) urges the municipality to identify "how many of these are being improperly used for ordinary transport" and also to "assess the need" to increase this special fleet.
In a response to Lusa, the Lisbon city council recalled that "adapted taxis must prioritise the services requested by people with reduced mobility and their companions" and said that a ‘new regulation’ on the exercise of the activity in the municipality is ‘being studied’, which will seek to "reinforce the control of the conditions of vehicles adapted for people with reduced mobility, as well as the provision of requested services".
Although there are no exact figures on the number of MR - Reduced Mobility taxis in Portugal (the Lisbon city council has no information on the demand), the Portuguese Taxi Federation confirms that "most municipalities do not have licensed vehicles" for this purpose. In fact, in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, "only seven of the 18 districts have licensed vehicles", leading to journeys starting outside the district, ‘which means higher prices’, it notes.
In the Taxi Federation's assessment, the number of MR taxis available is low, as evidenced by the ‘very high occupancy rate’ of licensed vehicles. For this reason, it advocates incentives for the use of adapted vehicles in the operation of common licences that are already active, to which the Autocoope/Cooptáxis centre adds the relief of the costs of adapting and maintaining these vehicles, which are ‘high’.
By way of example, the nine adapted taxis that Autocoope/Cooptáxis has operating in Lisbon responded to 248 services in January 2025, an average of 28 services per car. ‘The current number of adapted vehicles cannot meet the growing demand,’ the company notes.
SBR/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
