The Government has finally announced how much public transport prices will go up by.
The cost of a monthly metro ticket is to rise by €5.1, or 21.3%, from February 1 in what will amount to the third increase in the space of a year.
However, the Government is introducing a new type of monthly pass called the ‘Navegante’, or ‘Navigator’, which will cost €35 and include buses, trams, metro and trains within Lisbon’s metropolitan area. Monthly passes for buses alone will rise by €1.5.
The change in price tariffs was announced at the end of last week by the Secretary of State for Transport, Sérgio Monteiro, who said that, overall, prices would go up by 5% for public transport services.
At the same time, it was also learnt that prices on privately-run public transport services would rise by 4%.
The exception will be for monthly bus passes in Lisbon which will suffer increases of 5.45%. Now a monthly bus pass will change from €27.50 to €29.
The cost of a monthly pass on Lisbon’s metro will climb by 21.3% from February, going from €23.9 to €29.
The combined Lisbon metro and bus will be scrapped and replaced by the new ‘Navegante’ pass.
The idea of having an interchangeable pass which could be used in both Porto and Lisbon has also been shelved.
Instead, the cost of a monthly bus pass in Porto will remain at €29 while the price of a metro pass in Portugal’s second city will actually go down from €36.5 to €36.
Sérgio Monteiro explained that the new prices will remain unaltered until January 1, 2013.
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