The Elevador da Glória Will Not Be Rebuilt as It Was: Carris Picks a New Installation, a Cabin That Is Not Wood, and a 2029 Opening

The Elevador da Glória will not come back as the machine that went down the hill on 3 September 2025. Carris presented the replacement on Monday afternoon at the Ordem dos Engenheiros (Order of Engineers) in Lisbon, three days before the first anniversary of the derailment that killed sixteen people and injured more than twenty, and the first of its five guiding principles is that this is a new installation rather than a reconstruction.

The tender for design and construction goes out in the first quarter of 2027. If it runs to plan, the new ascensor opens in the first half of 2029.

Why it cannot legally be a repair

Rui Lopo, who took over as president of Carris in January, put the point in regulatory terms. The accident structurally damaged a set of elements and effectively destroyed the working cabin, so the equipment can no longer sit inside the European exception that covers historic installations running without substantial modification since 1 January 1986. "The responsibility of Carris was not only to rebuild the past," he said. "It is necessarily to design the future."

That has consequences a passenger will notice. The cabin will be similar in shape to the old one but will not be made of wood. Lopo said it will use materials more resistant to impact, fire-rated, and compliant with the full European safety standard for this class of equipment. The other four principles commit Carris to absolute safety for passengers, workers and third parties; to preserving the Calçada da Glória as it has looked for 140 years, with public use of the cobbles maximised; to keeping the heritage value that sits in the ensemble of car, incline, gradient and setting without faking an antiquity the new machine will not have; and to an accessible cabin designed for different passenger profiles, including reduced mobility.

"The ascensor will be new," Lopo said. "The place will stay historic."

The timetable, and what could move it

Luís Gonçalves, of the independent technical commission advising Carris, said the aim is to have the international public tender launched by the end of the first quarter of 2027 so that 2029 remains reachable. Lopo named the main threat to that date, and it is not procurement. The works sit in a part of Lisbon dense with archaeological remains. "You never know what you are going to find when you lift the whole structure," he said.

Gonçalo Reis, deputy mayor of Lisbon, set out the mandate the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) gave Carris as its sole shareholder: a robust and technically advanced solution at international best practice, a mobility solution compatible with requalifying the public space, a modern design that still respects the character of the old lift, and an exemplary and transparent international tender open to national and international technology partners on equal terms.

Ricardo Bak Gordon, the architect on the project, described the brief as an opportunity for a critical review of the place, and said the intention is to museumise parts of carriage 1 and make them visitable. "Rebuilding will not mean forgetting," said Leonor Medeiros of the working group. "It will add a new layer of history."

Asked whether he was comfortable that the public still has no account of what failed, Lopo drew a distinction: "There is not a lack of answers, there is a lack of conclusions." The final report from the GPIAAF, the state air and rail accident investigation office, was pushed back in August to the first quarter of 2027, the same window in which the tender is meant to open.

What this means for expats

• Three more years without the Glória, at best: and the Lavra is on the same path. In June Carris told opposition councillors both would be converted entirely to a current certified system, and that the city would go years without its lifts. Monday put a date on the first of them for the first time.
• The historic funicular as a category is ending: Lisbon's remaining lifts moved under a single safety regulator in August, and Porto has already suspended the Guindais for certification.
• Bairro Alto access stays on foot or by bus: the Calçada da Glória remains open to walkers, and preserving that is now a formal design constraint rather than a courtesy.
• Liability is still being settled separately: Fidelidade, the Carris insurer, puts its costs so far at 2.3 million euros, covering four compensation agreements with families of the dead alongside funerals, repatriations, surgery, rehabilitation and lost wages. A 1.05 million euro damages action is separately before the administrative court.
• The criminal file is untouched by any of this: the Polícia Judiciária searches of Carris and its maintenance contractor in May run on their own timetable.

The awkwardness of Monday is that the design brief has arrived well ahead of the explanation. Carris has committed to a machine, a cabin material and an opening year before the investigators have said in public what broke. Lopo's answer was that he would rather the conclusions be right than quick. Both documents are now expected in the same three months of 2027.