The return of Carris Metropolitana's bus lines from Almada to Areeiro is planned for the end of this year. After that, a new bus terminal will be built close to the current one.
Three shelters in a row on Avenida Padre Manuel da Nóbrega, near the Roma-Areeiro railway station, make up the so-called Areeiro Bus Terminal. Some TST buses used to stop here, serving Almada, and the Rodoviária de Lisboa buses still stop here, connecting cities like Loures and Vila Franca de Xira. With this Terminal, which has never been worthy of this terminology, you could get from the outskirts to the city center and from the city center to the outskirts.
With the arrival of Carris Metropolitana to the South Bank in early summerthe old bus lines that served Almada were diverted to Sete Rios, which generated protest from some passengerswho regretted being further away from their accustomed destinations, forcing new transfers. The deactivation of Areeiro Terminal and the concentration of suburban bus services in Sete Rios had been decided by the Lisbon City Hall and the change to Carris Metropolitana will have been the pretext to start making this change - In Areeiro, only the Rodoviária de Lisboa routes remained, but for a long term, since when they are integrated in the new brand in January 2023 they will also stop in Areeiro.
Faced with popular protest, the municipality of Almada will have pressured the capital's municipality to continue to have the terminal in Areeiro; and, at the end of July, the Mayor of Almadense, Inês de Medeiros, published in her social networks the project of the alleged terminal that would be repositioned in the center of Lisbon, in a new location. Lisboa Para Pessoas asked both the City Council of Almada and of Lisbon for the project of this future terminal, but unfortunately never got an affirmative answer.
However, the municipality led by Carlos Moedas stated that it is"working on a solution so that we can, as soon as possible, return the routes in question to Areeiro, removing them from Sete Rios". The return of the Metropolitan Carris buses will be done in two phases: an intermediate and a definitive one, at least in the medium term. The intermediate solution "will be executed by the Lisbon Municipality" and may involve a quasi-administrative decision to allow suburban buses to stop again where they stopped before. This terminal "intermediate" should become operational "by the end of the year" and the autarchy says it is meeting with "with the various stakeholders involved in the process to find the best solution for everyone"This is particularly true for passengers on the affected bus lines.
The definitive solution - definitive, at least, in the medium term - will be located on Avenida Almirante Gago Coutinho where there is currently an EMEL parking lot. According to the project disclosed by Inês de Medeiros, this park will shrink, but the Lisbon City Hall guarantees that the project is still being concluded and that only then will it be possible "the sending of more details".
It is not certain what the future of Areeiro will be as an intermodal interface and whether it will remain with the future terminal planned for Sete Rioswhich will cross suburban buses with long-distance buses (Rede Expressos and Flixbus), in a large interface, connected to the subway and the train. What is certain is that EMEL has been collaborating with different entities in a research project on the current bus terminals in the city of Lisbon - a work that will help define the future of these equipments in the perspective of municipal and inter-municipal mobility. At the beginning of the summer, face-to-face and online surveys were conducted with users at the city's five main terminals - Campo Grande, Colégio Militar, Oriente, Pontinha, and Sete Rios.
