Transtejo Soflusa Stretches the Cacilhas–Cais do Sodré Window to 5:00–2:30 on 8 June — Two Extra Barreiro Morning Runs Land Before the Seixal Connection Slot Opens Later in June

Lisbon's commuter ferries enter a longer service window from Monday, 8 June, with Transtejo Soflusa stretching weekday operations on the Cacilhas–Cais do Sodré line and adding morning capacity to the Barreiro link.

On Cacilhas, the first sailing now leaves at 5:00 instead of 5:20, and the last boat slides to 2:30 from the previous 1:40 cutoff — a 100-minute late-night extension that pushes the line close to a 21-hour daily window. On weekends and holidays the new timetable lays down four additional round trips on top of the longer operating hours, a direct response to demand growth on the Cacilhas–Almada catchment.

The Barreiro carreiras keep their existing weekend pattern but pick up two extra weekday departures concentrated in the first hours of the morning, where commuter pressure on Lisbon's southern margin has been tightest. The operator says the early-morning rebalance is the most immediate fix to the queue dynamics flagged by southern Câmaras and the Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (Lisbon Metropolitan Area, AML) in recent months.

A third leg — Barreiro–Seixal–Cais do Sodré — remains on the launch list for June with no firm start date yet. Transtejo Soflusa plans to open it on weekends first, then layer in weekday morning, afternoon and evening services as fleet rotations allow. The Seixal call point will plug a long-standing gap on the southern bank, where road and CP commutes have absorbed traffic the river previously could not handle.

The Tagus ferry operator, renationalised in 2017, has spent the past three years working through a fleet renewal programme of ten new electric catamarans built at Astilleros Gondán in Asturias. The first units are already rotating on the Cacilhas and Barreiro lines, and the longer hours announced for 8 June match the additional vessel availability. Passenger volumes on these lines totalled 18.3 million trips in 2025, a figure AML expects to push past 19 million as the new timetable beds in.

For households north of the river the practical difference is a viable return trip after late Lisbon events. For the Outra Margem the new 5:00 start cuts dead time between the first Cacilhas bus connections and the first ferry of the day, which matters most to shift workers in hospitality, healthcare and construction. Weekend tourists at the Cristo Rei, Almada Velha and Cova do Vapor recreational zones gain four more Cacilhas crossings in each direction.

The operator has flagged adjustments in boarding signage and on the TTSL app schedules from Monday morning, and warns that the new 2:30 last-boat slot only operates on nights with sufficient fleet readiness; degraded service may still revert to the previous 1:40 cutoff if a vessel is in maintenance.

The next milestone in the Tagus river-transport calendar is the Seixal start date and an integration test of the digital wallet ticketing currently being rolled out on CP's Passe Ferroviário Verde, the system migrated to the gov.pt app on 7 June. Linking ferry and rail passes inside one wallet remains the operator's medium-term objective.