Metro de Lisboa Weighs Earlier Openings and Later Closes in a Timetable Study With CP and Transtejo

Lisbon's underground railway is examining whether to widen its operating hours, weighing earlier morning openings and later night-time closes against the maintenance window it relies on to keep trains running safely. The review by Metropolitano de Lisboa (Lisbon Metro) is being run jointly with the national rail operator and the Tagus ferry company, so that any changes line up across the capital's transport network.

What is on the table

The Metro currently runs every day, including weekends and public holidays, from 6:30 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. The study, launched in recent weeks, looks at "coordinated schedule adjustments" alongside Comboios de Portugal (CP, the national railway) and Transtejo (the Tagus river ferry operator), assessing passenger demand, staffing, technical constraints and financial sustainability before any timetable is changed.

It forms part of the operator's 2026–2028 strategic plan, which sets out to reinforce service levels, improve connections between different modes of transport and gradually cut waiting times on the network. Extending the hours, however, is not straightforward: the company carries out essential overnight work on track and signalling systems during the closure, and any earlier start or later finish would have to be reprogrammed around that.

The case for and against longer hours

Pressure to open the network earlier has been building. The environmental association Zero earlier this year called for trains to start running at 5:30 a.m., arguing that commuters squeezed by rising fuel prices need a viable alternative to the car before the current 6:30 start. The Metro has signalled at industry events that it would like to open earlier across the week, framing extended access as part of a broader shift toward public transport.

The government has been more cautious. While open to an extension, it has argued that demand for public transport in the deep night is significantly lower and is better met by surface options such as buses, and it insists that any change must "safeguard" the overnight maintenance that underpins reliability. That balance — more hours for passengers versus the engineering time the system needs — is the central tension the study is trying to resolve.

Reliability first

Running alongside the timetable question is a push to fix the basics. The operator has set a target to bring lift and escalator availability back toward pre-pandemic levels by September 2026, after unavailability climbed to roughly 24% for lifts and 14% for escalators in 2024 — against about 4% in 2019. Broken access equipment is a daily frustration for older passengers, parents with pushchairs and travellers with luggage, and restoring it is being treated as a precondition for a credible, expanded service.

For Lisbon's residents and the many newcomers who rely on the Metro to move around the city without a car, the outcome will shape the daily commute. No new timetable has been fixed yet; the operator says any decision will follow the joint review with CP and Transtejo.