This episode is the first of our new series on UMX, 'Navigating Urban Transit' featuring George Liu. In each episode, George travels to a different European city to discover its public transit system and its specificities. Stay tuned to find out where he will go next! 🤔🔎

@Obu2who

7 ай бұрын

Great video and storytelling.

@urbanmobilityexplained

7 ай бұрын

@@Obu2who Glad you liked it! Thank you

I visited Lisbon in 2018 and I found to be a very touristy city, probably the most touristy I had been to. The old trams I feel are also stuck in a limbo, because I don't think any modern tram of a longer build could negotiate the extremely tight corners and steep grades of the old hilly network. This means that replacing the old trams and providing a higher-capacity, more accessible option is basically impossible without switching to buses. I feel like Lisbon has been overwhelmed by tourists a bit too much, to the point where local needs and convenience is taking a backseat.

@vasquen

5 ай бұрын

The only way to segragate the touristic needs and general mobility is subway, which was indeed studied for a cross hill line on a rubber tired metro, but was deemed too expensive and not a priority. There is however a new strech of the green subway line being built that will help connect downtown to the western hill. The surface lines were never cared much for the city hall and even if the hilly ones will never be the true solution for general mobility, they can still be improved and expanded. Note that there is no control on excess car traffic in the centre so its very easy for any mixed in transit to be stuck. Just that would have huge results in the surface lines. Plus the city also never really fully realized the recovery of the continuous riverside tram line that is very needed and where it already existes keeps not segregating that line from traffic. Plus, heavily used bus corridors that used to be tramways keep on without any plans to improve them back to what they used to be and produce good public space in the process for a change

@Mainyehc

4 ай бұрын

@@vasquennever really fully? Are the new CAF trams not good enough for you? Do you not realize those projects are actually either underway (Cais do Sodré and Campo das Cebolas’ new segregated right-of-way is proof positive of that) or, at the very least, in the project phase? Sheesh, some people are never satisfied…

Very cool video. I used the 28 tram a lot when I was a kid. It was still very much used as a means of transportation. Nowadays, with a few exceptions, trams are mostly for tourism.

I love this a hundred years old Tram,i am jealous of Lisbon,in Athens we had have got and we unpicked it.

Living in lisbon sonce 2018 .. the transportation system is pretty good and reliable , and very cheap (I pay 40 euro per month to have access to all transportation means in the metropolitan area of lisbon) .. living in Campo de Ourique , tram 28 is the most efficient way for me to reach Alfama or Graça in a short time .. Lisbon without its old trams and elevators would look dead .. Lisbon transportation is awesome.. it just needs to expand its underground (metro) network .. There will be new stations in Estrela , Santos, Campo de Ourique and Alcantara .. but more station will be needed in the future ..

I've lived in Lisbon for 43 years and I feel like I'm the foreigner. The 28 tram is for old people and disabled people who live in the old neighborhoods (the few who do, because now it's just shitty Air'n'bs) and not a Disneyland carousel. It seems that public transport in Lisbon is segregated to Lisboetas. My dear Lisboa, what is wrong with you? Please forget about Portugal and Lisbon for a few years, to see if we Portuguese can have the same life we ​​had 5 years ago. Leave us alone!!

@skurinski

Ай бұрын

cala-te

The only way to segragate the touristic needs and general mobility is subway, which was indeed studied for a cross hill line on a rubber tired metro, but was deemed too expensive and not a priority. There is however a new strech of the green subway line being built that will help connect downtown to the western hill. The surface lines were never cared much for the city hall and even if the hilly ones will never be the true solution for general mobility, they can still be improved and expanded. Note that there is no control on excess car traffic in the centre so its very easy for any mixed in transit to be stuck. Just that would have huge results in the surface lines. Plus the city also never really fully realized the recovery of the continuous riverside tram line that is very needed and where it already existes keeps not segregating that line from traffic. Plus, heavily used bus corridors that used to be tramways keep on without any plans to improve them back to what they used to be and produce good public space in the process for a change

Since the tourism boom in Lisbon, the City is even restoring old rails to accommodate the 100-years old trams, at expenses of automobile and bus circulation. E.g.: Rua das Escolas Gerais, near Alfama, was all repaved in 2018. I remember riding one old Lisbon tram with recreational purposes in Whitehorse, Yukon (Canada) some 8 years ago. I wonder how it got there. But I guess at some point, Carris was selling them because of their inefficiency. Now they are recycling the vehicles. Nice video, George Liu!

@urbanmobilityexplained

Ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

Amazing video as everything is put together soo well it gives a perfect glimpse of what Lisbon transport looks like to those who have never visited the city!

@urbanmobilityexplained

7 ай бұрын

Very glad you liked it! Thanks for watching ☺

This is an amazing quality production!!!

@urbanmobilityexplained

7 ай бұрын

Thank you!

What song was that at the end?

How come the buses are still stuck in traffic? Sounds like cars shouldn't be there...

@Mainyehc

4 ай бұрын

Bingo. That’s the next phase, the Reduced Emissions Zone in Baixa, i.e. the outright banning of non-essential car trips (such as cargo and emergency vehicles). Boom, problem solved.

Its a very very dull ques 0:51 tion...

This bus network needsto be altered and updated - There are no systematic interchanges and the lines differ in service patterns what especially hurts when a line operates at a every 16/17/19/23/25... minute pattern. There are lots of lines but not a hierarchic structurated system with something "MetroBus" in Hamburg or Munich, which operate on a frequent pattern on trunk lines. There is just no structure a foreign passenger could help to make their way through Lisbon with these buses. While the trams except #15 are for the tourists, the buses are only for the locals - who KNOW their line. Almost segregated transport systems. And lots of bus lines paralleling the trams. Disintegration of the networks instead of cooperation, even where it would be possible. The second step should not to be to rip out the last of the ancient tram lines that are "cash cows" bc of the tourist attraction they are. It's importatnt to bulid new lines with lots of segregation and operate them on a frequent basis as trunk lines similar to a "Stadtbahn" system - feeding the metro or even to give some ease to overcrowded metro lines on routes on adjacent corridors to the metro lines. I am happily looking forward to see the newest genereation of trams operating. The metro is a fine system, but there are NO cross-platform transfers at all - the most extreme interchange I experienced was the transfer between the verde and vermelho lines at Alameda - in order to take the route via Oriente to the Airport (a deviation in itself... - ok, it was built bc of the Expo, which had its core at Oriente; it's more two lines joint together at the famous Oriente Rail Station). The communter rail system is really fine, but not very well integrated with the metro system. There even seem to be tendencies to build stations in a way that transfers are made difficult with the best example Roma-Areeiro with the metro immediately built beneath the station and not stopping ther, but only at Areeiro 400m to the south. Or there are even tendencies to disinegrate station names - like when Sete Rios interchange station on the metro was renamed Jardim Zoologico - no longer matching with the connected Sete Rios rail station. The lack of integrated online passenger information between rail companies Fertagus and CP and Carris/Metro and Carris metropolitana (even between the companies with the same name) is straining... The dynamic passener information except of train and metro stations does not work anymore at all in most places. The fare system is only partially integrated, even if you can pin the same fare card on all modes of transit. But you are charged another time for every transfer on another mode of transportation. If you go by bus for two stations and then transfer to the train = two tickets. Positive is the integration between buses, trams and metro, even these are operated by different companies. I do not at all complain about older vehicles - I have no problem with sturdy 1980/90ies/2000s rail carrriages or buses dating from 200X, as long as these are low floor vehicles (and they are!), the buses air conditioned. I am sure there is a looong story behind all these things, and there is money, and politics and all... What I want to say with this: "Metro and bus is modern, frequent and fine but trams are old fashioned" is not really true in Lisbon imo. It's far more complex, and there would be a looot to do in order to improve all these sytems to a rather modern entity of a metropolitan mobility system.

@TheDinisPT

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, you don't really know what you are talking about...

@Mainyehc

4 ай бұрын

I agree with mostly everything you said except for cross-platform interchanges. Even London, with their three-tube deep-level station layouts can’t avoid those, and Alameda, last time I checked, has a travelator that is almost always operational (unlike, say, the battered and beleaguered escalators at Baixa-Chiado, oof) and is undergoing a comprehensive elevator improvement plan, what more do you want? Having those best-case-scenario interchanges everywhere is, pun intended, a pipe dream. Roma/Areeiro is about the only one I agree with but, at this point, building the Madrid metro station under it would be prohibitively expensive… I’d wager a bet and say we’ll get a station at Calvanas, next to Hospital Júlio de Matos, 10 or 20 years before that one. 🙄 And as for Oriente…? Where do I even start? The train line existed already, and the station was conceived to be expanded in the future and to interface also with buses at the ground level, there was no other sensible solution. It’s big, and big stations are complicated and expensive. We don’t sh*t money like Bavaria/Stuttgart, you know? Having a station by Calatrava is already enough of a poisoned privilege (i.e. a gorgeous, potential liability), and it’s a good thing that with the High Speed Rail expansion they’ll finally address its built-in issues and protect passengers from the elements just a little bit better… And have you heard about the quadrupling of the Beltway Line? That will FINALLY turn that station into the proper “S-Bahn-cum-ICE” hub it was designed to be since the very beginning. You’ll be able to take a Fertagus train from Pragal, arrive at Oriente and, from there, take a high speed train to Madrid and beyond, because the former will no longer be capped at Roma-Areeiro. And with the connection of the Cascais line with the Beltway line at Alcântara, yes, you will also have some direct services to Oriente… Just those two projects will revolutionize mass transit in the Lisbon Metropolitan area.

Trams exist only due to lazyness and portrait a touristic Lisbon. Trams are quite dangerous, sometimes they loose the breaks and no one wants to be on one of them in the falling a hill . That is why most of them were discontinued. When they were installed they were viewed has elevators for the lisbon middle class and they enlarged and opened windows were a safety escape for the several political coups in the early XX century ( the prime minister in the 1920`s jumped from a tram through the window due to a bomb)

This analysis is quite flawed. It makes multiple assumptions and errors despite evidence to the contrary. It assumes automobiles and the attendant congestion as a given, which it really shouldn't-simply adding more restrictions to them would vastly improve the performance of all surface transit, which would be able to take up the resultant demand with higher speeds and better frequency. It assumes that the funiculars and trams are "just" for tourists, despite evidence (including the comment section of this video!) to the contrary. While the upfront cash fare may be high, most residents that ride regularly would presumably purchase a pass that would offer a much better rate. It assumes that buses could reasonably directly replace all of the tram lines, when it LITERALLY simultaneously shows trams traversing streets that would be impracticable for buses. There are plenty of videos on KZread showing trams waiting for buses that get stuck trying to take the tight turns and narrow streets. It falsely describes the history, when in fact many of the trams were replaced by the metro, not buses. It dismisses the trams as outdated and fails to adequately take note of the modernized line and plans for expansion thereof.

A bit disappointed by this video. Usually, urban mobility's videos are cutting-edge and informative, but this one's major proposal is to replace Lisbon trams with buses. Really? This is the kind of short-sighted insensitivity you'd expect from 1973, not 2023. A city, if its transportation network itself attracts tourists, does not make it uglier to turn them away. The demolishing of historic neighbourhoods in Detroit for highways and parking also 'made the city more efficient' by twentieth-century standards. It also killed it.

@jedwinmok3184

7 ай бұрын

Nowhere does the video advocate to “replace Lisbon’s trams with buses.” If anything, Lisbon has already done a good enough job of that since the 1960s. The video does explicitly highlight the importance of trams to Lisbon’s culture, economy, and heritage. And it’s undeniable different modes of transport have their own advantages and disadvantages. The entire point of transportation planning is to weigh those tradeoffs to produce the greatest collective benefit! The issue of heritage preservation is certainly a pressing one in modern city planning. We’re in a time where 1960s car-centric planning is widely recognized as a mistake, yet are so traumatized by the era that we grasp to hold on to every part of heritage. This conflict is exactly what underscores so much of the crises we face in the western world - particularly regarding the massive housing shortage and poor transport planning. The entire point of the video is to examine this central conflict with nuance - not advocate for a position.

@urbanmobilityexplained

7 ай бұрын

​@@jedwinmok3184you said it all, thank you! 😊

What the heck is up with the Flamenco and Latin soundtrack right at the very beginning? 🤦‍♂️ Not only are the conclusions weird and anachronic, to say the least - buses are less environmentally-friendly by default and by design, and these are a testament to durability -, you couldn’t even bother to get the culture right? Now, back to the trams: being “tossed around” is much better than… climbing on foot (guess what, some Lisboners, including yours truly, still take those trams and can use them at cheaper prices with pre-paid cards and monthly passes), those trams will eventually be replaced by some kind of modern replicas, or even have modern - but small - vehicles added to them (heck, there’s even a buyback program planned, as many were sold of as scrap but actually survived as museum and collector’s pieces), and… guess what, we even reinstated tram line 24, and there are plans to reinstate tram line 15 (which also used the smaller vehicles but now has an extended fleet of brand-new CAF ones not unlike the “modernized“ but now also aging Siemens counterparts) to Cruz Quebrada on the West and even extend it to Oriente in the Northeast. Also, regarding cars, yes, it’s a problem, but an easily fixable one, by using a quintessentially European solution: BANNING CARS FROM DOWNTOWN. There’s a longstanding project to do just that, and it seems even our right-wing, car-lover-backed Mayor might just go for it, and soon. Boom, problem solved. Tsk tsk, such superficial research… You probably read a Wikipedia article or two, right? You were *in* Lisbon and didn’t even bother interviewing someone at Carris Museum in Santo Amaro. 😂