FlixBus Boards Its First Passengers at Sete Rios on 29 September, With 23 Services and Nothing at All Between Half Past Four and Half Past Eight

FlixBus will finally board passengers at Sete Rios on 29 September, six months and three weeks after a Lisbon court ordered that it be given immediate access to Lisbon's main long-distance coach terminal. It enters with 23 services, and with no slot at all in the late afternoon.

The German operator confirmed the date to ECO's Local Online on Thursday. It also made clear that it does not regard the matter as closed. "This is a first step that finally allows operations to begin at Sete Rios, but it does not mean the process is resolved, given the reduced volume of operation," the company said.

Twenty-three services out of a claimed 1,200

FlixBus put a number on the constraint. "The 23 services now authorised represent about 1.9 percent of the alleged total capacity of the Sete Rios terminal, estimated at around 1,200 daily services, and present significant limitations," the company said in its statement.

The limitation it objects to most is a hole in the timetable. "Between 16h30 and 20h30, FlixBus was not allocated any availability to operate daily at the terminal, creating a blocking period at the moment of greatest demand." Some of the slots it did receive are not available every day of the week, which means certain journeys can run on some days and not others.

Because of that, only part of the operation moves. The rest stays at the Gare do Oriente terminal in Parque das Nações, which FlixBus has used for its Lisbon services throughout the dispute. Passengers booking a Lisbon departure from late September will need to check which of the two terminals their particular journey leaves from.

One thing FlixBus did win is a presence on the ground. It will have its own ticket office at Sete Rios, selling seats on departing coaches and handling lost property. Tickets remain available online.

The fight that has not ended

Sete Rios is managed by Rede Nacional de Expressos, part of the Barraqueiro group, which is also FlixBus's main competitor on Portuguese intercity routes. That is the structural fact the whole dispute turns on: the terminal manager and the incumbent operator are the same company.

The Tribunal Administrativo de Lisboa (Lisbon Administrative Court) ruled on 8 March that FlixBus must be admitted immediately. Access was then set for 20 August and slipped, then pencilled in for 24 September, and has landed on 29 September. In the meantime FlixBus filed an enforcement action and a criminal complaint against the terminal's managers. Last November it staged what it called a guerrilla action at the terminal, claiming losses above 12 million euros.

Rede Nacional de Expressos has rejected the blame, telling Local Online previously that it bears no responsibility for FlixBus not holding, in time, the authorisations needed to start the services it wants to move across from the Gare do Oriente.

Tiago Alves, FlixBus's director of operations in Portugal, said the company "will continue to demand greater scrutiny of the terminal's effective capacity and to fight for access on equitable, transparent and non-discriminatory terms, until the court's decision is complied with in full".

Two threads stay live. FlixBus says it is examining the remaining 40 slots the terminal has made available. And it wants the terminal manager to extend the validity of the stop authorisations it has been granted, which currently run for only 60 working days, so that its position at Sete Rios does not expire on someone else's timetable.

Why it matters beyond Lisbon

Sete Rios is the node. Competition there shapes what the alternative to a CP train costs on the routes foreign residents use most, and this dispute reaches well past the capital: FlixBus says it still has no access, or conditioned access, at eleven other terminals including Coimbra, Évora, Faro and Albufeira. Our guide to long-distance coaches sets out who runs which terminal, and why the answer follows you onto the fare.