EMEL Replaced the Gira App on Tuesday, and the 300 Euro Hold on a Lisbon Day Pass Goes With It

Anyone who has stood in front of a Gira dock in Lisbon watching the app crash, reopen and demand a password will recognise the problem EMEL set out to fix on Tuesday. The Empresa Municipal de Mobilidade e Estacionamento de Lisboa (EMEL, Lisbon's municipal mobility and parking company) released a new application for Gira, the city's public bike-share system, replacing the one that has been irritating its users for years.

The headline change for casual riders is financial. Until now, buying a day pass came with a 300 euro deposit attached to the card. That goes. So does the points scheme, and so does the shared wallet between Gira and ePark, EMEL's parking app.

What happens to your account

EMEL's answer, published on the Gira website, is that nothing on your side needs rebuilding.

• Your login stays. The same email address and password work in the new app.
• Your pass migrates automatically. Whether it is the annual, monthly, daily or Gira Navegante pass, it carries across.
• Your balance is guaranteed. It appears in the new app.
• The riding rules are unchanged. Trips remain free up to 45 minutes.

The practical step is to find "GIRA a app" in the App Store or on Google Play, install it, and log in with the credentials you already had.

The points scheme ends

Gira's loyalty points, awarded for use, stop accruing with the new app. EMEL says existing balances are frozen rather than cancelled, and that users will "in future" have the chance to convert what they have accumulated. No date is attached to that promise, which is worth noting: a frozen balance with no conversion mechanism is, for the moment, a number on a screen.

Two wallets where there was one

The digital balance is no longer common to Gira and ePark. The two apps now hold separate credit. EMEL has built a manual bridge rather than an automatic one: to move money between them, you telephone 211 163 060, give your NIF and the amount you want transferred, and the company says the transfer is made within a maximum of 48 hours.

That is a step backwards from what EMEL had said it wanted. Its 2023 annual report described a future mobility management application that would consolidate ePark and Gira "into a single user interface". Carlos Silva, EMEL's president, told RTP Antena 1 that the objective has not been abandoned, but that merging the two requires changing the company's central system, and the public tender for that "is stopped at the Administrative Court because of litigation between bidders". His reasoning for going ahead separately was blunt: "Gira could not wait."

He was equally direct about why. "We could not carry on with an operation that failed every day, either because you had to repeat logins or because the bike would not come out," he said, adding that "not everything is solved, it is an operation in progress".

What is new inside the app

Black and white dominate the redesigned map. Stations with no free dock now show in red, which answers the most common complaint of anyone who has arrived at a full station with the clock running. There is a landscape mode for riders who mount the phone on the handlebar cradle, and an option that hands a selected station over to a maps application for turn-by-turn directions. EMEL also promises faster map loading and end-of-trip statistics, including an estimate of the carbon dioxide not emitted because of the journey.

On payment, MB Way is added as an option. Apple Pay and Google Pay are promised for the "near future".

One reason the redesign matters commercially is that Gira has been losing riders to unofficial third-party apps built by users frustrated with the official one. Whether the new version brings them back is the test EMEL has set itself.

The stations still missing

Silva also told RTP Antena 1 that he expects every vandalised station to be reactivated by the end of October. That follows the wave of vandalism that took about 1,000 bikes out of the network and left a repair bill put at 400,000 euros. Until those docks are back, the map will keep showing gaps that have nothing to do with demand.

What Gira costs in 2026

For readers new to the system, the tariff structure has two parts: an access fee, which is what you pay for the pass, and a usage fee, which depends on how long each trip lasts. EMEL's published figures are:

• Annual pass: 25 euros. Trips free to 45 minutes, plus 1 euro for 45 to 90 minutes, plus 2 euros for each further 45-minute period beyond 90 minutes.
• Monthly pass: 15 euros. Same usage fees.
• Daily pass: 2 euros. Free to 45 minutes, then 2 euros for 45 to 90 minutes and 2 euros per further 45-minute period. It can only be bought with MB Way or a credit card.
• Gira Navegante: free access for holders of an active monthly Navegante or Lisboa Viva card who are 16 or over and whose tax address is registered in the Lisbon municipality. The usual Gira usage fees then apply.

The network runs seven days a week from 06:00 to 02:00 the following morning. If you hold a Navegante pass and live in Lisbon, the Gira Navegante route is the one worth the paperwork; our guide to Portuguese transport passes covers how the Navegante card itself works.

A practical footnote on the bikes. Gira's machines are pedelecs, electrically assisted bicycles with a maximum continuous rated power of 0.25 kW, whose assistance tapers off and cuts out at 25 km/h. That keeps them inside the legal definition of a bicycle rather than a moped, which is why no helmet is required to ride one. The line between the two categories is one of the more expensive things to get wrong on a privately owned electric bike.

The app launch details and the remarks by Carlos Silva were reported by RTP Antena 1, which was given a preview of the changes. The tariffs, transition rules, operating hours and technical specifications are taken from EMEL's own published Gira pages.