Lisbon, Aug. 6, 2026 (Lusa) - The 25 Abril Bridge spanning the River Tagus in the Portuguese capital is the iconic section of the Fertagus commuter railway line; the company opened the bridge rail crossing and has carried 560 million passengers since 1999 – more than the population of the European Union.
Opened on 6 August 1966 to link the cities of Lisbon and Almada, the 25 de Abril Bridge (originally named the Salazar Bridge), the first to be built across the Tagus estuary, celebrates its 60th anniversary today, but it was not until more than 30 years later that trains began to cross between the two banks, revolutionising travel between the south bank of the Tagus and the capital.
«For Fertagus, the connection with the bridge is very strong; when we need to explain who Fertagus is, [we say that] Fertagus is the train that runs across the bridge,» Clara Esquível, a director at Fertagus, told Lusa. Fertagus was the first private company to operate passenger rail services in the country and also the first to launch rail services across the bridge.
The start of rail operations on the bridge, on 27 July 1999, «did indeed make journeys much quicker», she noted. The service initially ran between Fogueteiro (municipality of Seixal, district of Setúbal) and Entrecampos (Lisbon), serving seven stations with a journey time of 27 minutes.
In 2003, the service was extended to Roma-Areeiro (Lisbon) and, in 2004, the extension to Setúbal was completed, connecting the city to the capital in 57 minutes.
In recent years, the company – which carried 3.5 million passengers in its first year of operation – has seen a rise in demand, due mainly to the reduction in season ticket prices under the Fare Reduction Support Programme introduced in 2019, and to population growth on the south bank of the Tagus.
«Between 2018 and 2025, our demand grew by 50%; we went from 21 million to 31.8 million passengers. This growth and the impact that the Navegante travel passes have had on Fertagus's service are therefore very significant,» she emphasised.
In the first half of this year alone, 15.6 million passengers were recorded.
This increase has presented challenges for the operator, which acknowledges that it needs to increase capacity during peak hours – something that «is not always easy to achieve in a short space of time», not least because the process is far more complex than simply buying more trains.
«We believe that increasing capacity will be possible; the Government is working on measures and we believe that, over the course of next year, there may already be measures in place that will improve this situation,» she said.
Alongside speed, Fertagus considers that the availability of other transport services and the reliability of the service are also reasons why people prefer to take the train when crossing the River Tagus.
«Our service is extremely reliable; we have always met over 99% of our timetables, and even in 2025 we achieved a timetable adherence rate of 99.3% – this is an extremely high figure, not only nationally but also as a benchmark internationally,» she emphasised.
Furthermore, she pointed out that Fertagus pioneered the creation of car parks at stations on the south bank, which customers can use with the same travel ticket; these currently offer more than 6,500 spaces. The company was also the first to employ women as train drivers, as early as 1999, and today has a female head of train drivers.
According to the company's figures, its trains carry an average of more than 133,000 passengers per day, which has meant that, over 27 years of operation, more than 95 million cars have been taken off the 25 Abril Bridge, preventing the emission of more than one million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂).
Since 1999, Fertagus's trains have travelled around 58 million kilometres, the equivalent of 1,450 trips round the Earth.
MPE/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
