Carris
The Companhia de Carris de Ferro de Lisboa , mostly just called Carris , is a state-owned transport company that operates most of the bus routes, trams and an elevator in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon . Founded in 1872, the company has been responsible for surface public transport in Lisbon ever since . In addition, the Carris also operates special tourist routes such as the Lisbon Tram Museum.
business
Carris operates a large inner-city transport network in Lisbon. This consists of:
- 80 bus routes with a network length of 680 kilometers
- the six lines of the Lisbon tram with a network length of 48 kilometers
- the three funiculars
- the Elevador de Santa Justa
In 2011 the company carried 232.7 million passengers, 214.3 of them on bus routes and 18.4 million on trams, elevators and funiculars. This is 7.9 million fewer passengers than in 2010 (−3.3%).
In spring 2012, Carris merged with the Lisbon Metro , with both companies formally remaining under one management.
history
The Companhia de Carris de Ferro de Lisboa was founded on September 18, 1872 and immediately received the concession to operate horse-drawn railways in the Portuguese capital the following year, on the initiative of the brothers Luciano Cordeiro de Sousa and Francisco Cordeiro de Sousa . On November 17, 1873, the Carris opened the first horse-drawn tram line, usually simply called Americanos in Portugal , between the Santa Apolónia station and Santos in the south-west of Lisbon.
The Americanos had great success in Lisbon, as they enabled much faster and more orderly traffic. Nevertheless, the Carris board of directors already considered it necessary to set a more efficient system in the future. Therefore, the Carris had various transport systems tried out, including a kind of steam tram between Cais do Sodré and Algés.
On August 31, 1901, the company opened the first electrically operated tram line in Lisbon between Cais do Sodré and Ribamar, near Algés , with the northern Portuguese city of Porto opening the first electric tram line six years earlier, in 1895. The new tram system was very successful, so that by 1905 the entire horse-drawn tram system was electrified. The tram saw its peak in the 1940s, it was almost the only means of transport in the Portuguese capital and the Carris the most successful transport company.
At the 1958 World Exhibition in Lisbon, the Carris first used buses; three lines ran over short, inner-city routes. But the bus increasingly prevailed, so that, encouraged by the Lisbon city administration, the tram gradually had to give up routes, the tasks of which the buses now fulfilled. The tramway shrank from an originally city-wide network to a few routes, the main route remained the connection from Cais do Sodré via Belém to Algés, where the Carris main depot is still located today. The tram experienced further shrinkage due to the massive expansion of the metro .
Until 1974, the company was majority owned by the British parent company Lisbon Electric Tramways . On January 1, 1974, the property became the property of the City of Lisbon.
In the early 1990s a rethink began for the first time; the company purchased new vehicles for the tram for the first time, realizing that the tram should continue to be an important attraction, at least for tourists. The now famous Linha 28 was preserved as a route through the old town of Lisbon. It connects practically all of Lisbon's tourist attractions.
In 2003 the company decided to revise the route network and modernize the appearance. Accompanied by the construction of the stop display ( Sistema de Informação ao Passageiro , SIP), Carris redesigned the bus and tram network in several phases as part of the Rede 7 concept . With the Rede 7 concept , the bus routes were given line identification colors for the first time.
Web links
- Official websites (Portuguese, English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.carris.pt/en/history/
- ↑ a b All data according to Carris Annual Report 2011 (Portuguese; PDF; 13.4 MB)
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ History of the Carris on their own homepage (Portuguese)
- ↑ Guido Korff: Europe's largest tram museum , or: The tram companies in Portugal today , in: Tram magazine , issue 50, November 1983, Franck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, pp. 297–311
