Lisbon public transport passengers will protest on Monday against the “chaos” generated by the construction work on the Metro’s circular line, which is having a “strong impact” on their lives, it was announced today.
“We’re going to concentrate at 6 p.m. on Monday near the Campo Grande station because we want to see this problem solved. It is having a strong and negative impact on people’s lives,” Cecília Sales, from the Lisbon Transport Users Committee.
According to the users’ representative, the works being carried out at Campo Grande station as part of the future circular line “force the transfer of passengers coming from Odivelas, Loures and also from the northern part of the city, Telheiras, Lumiar”.
“The construction work is preventing passage through there. Instead of going directly to the city center, as before, passengers are forced to transfer,” he said.
Referring to the reinforcement of Carris buses made to perform this transfer and minimize the impact of the works, Cecília Sales said that it is “clearly insufficient”, so she argues that we have to “find a solution that does not disturb people’s lives”.
As part of the works to create the Lisbon Underground’s circular line, the circulation between Telheiras and Campo Grande (Green line) and between Campo Grande and Cidade Universitária (Yellow line) has been interrupted since May 02 and until July 07.
On May 3rd, the Lisbon City Hall announced the reinforcement of Carris lines 736, 738 and 767 “with the objective of contributing to minimize the negative impact of the interruptions in the circulation of the metro”.
The works for the creation of the circular line were announced on May 8, 2017 by ML’s CEO, Vitor Domingues dos Santos, at a press conference where the then Minister of the Environment, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, and the mayor of Lisbon at the time, Fernando Medina, were also present.
The circular line was highly contested by user movements and political parties, and even received a recommendation from the Portuguese Parliament for the project to be abandoned.
The expansion of the Circular line, scheduled to open in 2024, has a total planned investment of 331.4 million euros. However, in December 2018, the cost of the work was set at 210 million euros, a figure revised in June 2021 to 240 ME.
The government justified in December the revision of the investment to 331.4 million euros with “various vicissitudes” during the course of the works that could not be anticipated, “such as geological peculiarities not detected in the surveys carried out and inconsistencies between the cadastral surveys and the surveys that preceded the works,” which forced “temporary vacancies, expropriations, and reinforcements of existing buildings.
