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Thank you. Yes I have read the interview with Rui Lopo, the new Carris president. It looks he loves the trams, which is good. But I’m a bit sceptical. Tramlines are not made because parts of the tracks are already in place. There must be enough passengers for them.
If I look to the current situation, then line 15 could easily be extended again to Cruz Quebrada and line 24 to Cais do Sodré. AFAIK both are in the plans already. A friend told me several years ago that the switches and crossing for the connection with Rua do Alecrim are already made and waiting in Santo Amaro to be installed. The route to Carmo is still almost complete, but I see no useful line for it, perhaps except for a tourist service.
For reinstalling complete lines is more necessary than tracks. Most of the old switches are gone, most of the overhead wires are gone, there must be enough substation capacity and there must be enough trams. And if new trams are acquired, then they need depot space.
The planned new line 16 follows the old route of line 9 (later 16 because both lines were combined), but I don’t know how much of the old tracks are still there. And it doesn’t really matter. It’s going to be a modern light rail with most of the route on reserved space and not sharing the streets with the other traffic. Even if exact the same streets would be used, then they would be complete reconstructed with new tracks anyway. The same can be expected to happen with any other new tramline.
In the interview nothing was said about the current tramlines. Proper operating tramlines have proper frequencies of at least every 8′-10′ during daytime, run every day and are not significant affected by delays caused by other traffic. The current reality: lines 12, 18 and 24 have far too low frequencies, line 25 is a bit better, but still a too low frequency, lines 18 and 25 don’t run every day, all lines suffer frequent from severe delays by external causes. Above that, line 28 is during daytime overcrowded. This all isn’t mentioned in the interview and in the past was never addressed by the previous Carris directors. Hopefully the new director will do that.
What an amazing, dedicated and thorough work on researching on the Portuguese tram history. Thank you and congratulations!
I was born in Setúbal but I live in Lisbon for quite a few years, I believe I arrived to one of your blogs through the take on the cable cars (what an amazing unknown history, after hearing the great episode from Histórias de Lisboa podcast with João Firmino da Costa)
Anyways, I was wondering if you have read the recent interview by the new president of Carris stating that they are planning on reopening some of the old tram lines (which is a wonderful idea), with priority to those which still have tracks on the floor. Therefor, I thought it could be interesting to know which lines is he talking about.
So my question is: might you already have done a map with the maximum extension of the Carris tram network in Lisbon, signaling those lines which still have tracks on the floor, either showing or buried, and those who were completely removed?
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