The 20-Euro Green Rail Pass Missed Its Mobility Week Date on Lisbon and Porto Commuter Trains, and Fertagus May Wait Until December
The ministry had promised the Passe Ferroviário Verde on CP's urban lines between 16 and 22 September. The decree is still awaiting promulgation, the minister now says October, and the Setúbal line has no firm date.
The government had picked the dates itself. On 21 August the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing announced that the Passe Ferroviário Verde, the 20-euro monthly rail pass, would reach CP's urban trains in Lisbon and Porto "in the third week of next month", during European Mobility Week, which ran from 16 to 22 September. Mobility Week ended on Tuesday. The pass is still not valid on those trains.
The ministry's explanation, given to RTP Antena 1, is procedural. "The operationalisation of the extension of the Passe Ferroviário Verde to the urban trains of Lisbon and Porto is being worked on by CP and Fertagus," it said, adding that the amendment to the decree-law that allows the extension "was approved in last week's Council of Ministers and is awaiting promulgation". In other words, the legal basis is now sitting with the President at Belém, and the operators cannot switch it on until he signs it.
Three dates in two months
The slippage has been gradual. At the Festa do Pontal in August, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro made the extension one of his headline promises, saying it would "in principle" be in force in September. The ministry's August statement then set Mobility Week as the target. By last week the ministry was telling RTP that there was no date at all. The infrastructure minister, Miguel Pinto Luz, has since told the newspaper Público that the expansion will happen in October.
Fertagus, the private operator running trains across the Ponte 25 de Abril between Lisbon and Setúbal, is further behind. The ministry says only that its integration will come later, without explaining why. The Secretary of State for Mobility, Cristina Pinto Dias, told the business site ECO that it would happen "by the end of the year", while Pinto Luz told Público he was confident it could be done in October. Both CP and Fertagus are telling customers, in messages RTP has seen, that the measure is not ready and that they will announce when it is.
What changes when it does arrive
The pass is already valid on CP's Regional and Intercidades services, but not on the Alfa Pendular, which will remain excluded. Extending it to the suburban lines matters to one specific group: commuters who travel only by train. At the moment many of them buy a metropolitan pass costing up to 40 euros a month; once the extension is in force, a rail-only commuter could switch to the 20-euro national pass instead. Our August report on the announcement sets out how the pass works on the lines already covered.
That switch is the question the two metropolitan transport authorities are now watching. In Lisbon, Diana Carneiro Dias, executive director of Transportes Metropolitanos de Lisboa, told RTP that it will take time to see whether the green pass draws people away from the Navegante pass or attracts new passengers to rail. "We are analysing the data," she said, "because only now will we be able to understand whether that public really exists."
Her Porto counterpart is more certain. Nuno Neves de Sousa, president of Transportes Metropolitanos do Porto, said an analysis of Andante holders who used only CP services found that "the number is not significant", and argued that the measure could bring more people into public transport rather than simply moving them between passes.
For now, anyone commuting on the Sintra, Cascais, Azambuja or Sado lines, or on Porto's suburban network, should keep buying the pass they already have until CP confirms the start date.
