Lisbon’s famous Gloria ad Lavra ‘elevators’ won’t be back any time soon, and may take on a different appearance when they do a few years from now.
That’s the bad news in a report from Lisbon’s public transit operator. The two systems were shut down last October after a fatal crash on the Gloria route. The ‘elevators; are cable-pulled funiculars that carried passengers up some of the city’s steepest hills for over a century last year’s crash.
They operated as pairs of cars attached to opposite ends of a long cable, counterweighted so that the weight of the downhill car helped pull its mate up the hill. The system relied on pneumatic brakes, operated by the driver. A third elevator, Funicular da Bica, which was also closed re-opened in April; it uses a different system.
Carris said the several-year wait is necessary because the system must be redesigned and rebuilt essentially from scratch, likely with independent cables, different brakes and measures that can overcome operator failure. That will result in major changes to the undercarriage of the vehicles, and possibly make it impossible to re-use the remaining existing bodies on the new mechanism.
Despite their popularity with visitors, they actually serve as important links connecting neighborhoods that are otherwise sharply separated; replacement bus routes take a long and winding route up and down the hills.
Image: Jakub Halun/Wikimedia Commons
