It may seem rather strange to write a new travel blog entry discussing the elevators of an underground metro system, but a year on from my three-night stopover in Lisbon and shoddy lifts remain my prevailing memory. (Pictures at the end of the post).
It began with a passing comment, as I neared the top of an exceedingly long staircase at Baixo-Chiado station, seated in my wheelchair and perched on a platform stairlift. One of the two station assistants that were assisting me told me that it was prudent to “always call ahead” before visiting any of the metro stations in Lisbon, to ensure that its elevator was in working order.
I can’t lie – I scoffed. I felt it was ridiculous and wholly unnecessary to make telephone calls before every journey I wanted to make that required my use of the metro. Especially given that I was a tourist for such a short amount of time, I would therefore be using several of the city’s metro stations, multiple times per day. I’d never be off the bloody phone, I thought! Yet, how wrong I was not to heed their advice.
I exited the station onto Rua do Crucifixo and thought nothing more of what I’d been told, until of course, the inevitable happened: just about every metro station I entered from that point, thereafter, had at least one lift that was out of order. As my time in Lisbon went by, the absurdity of just how many elevators were broken left me feeling helplessly exacerbated, and in what can only be described as an ‘if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry’ kind of mood.
Mercifully, the lift at the nearest station (São Sebastião) to the hotel where my friend and I were staying – Hotel Alif Avenidas – was always operational during our time there. But sadly, the reoccurring issues surrounding terrible access to and from the underground plagued me for the entire duration of my stay – with the worst of the experiences taking place at the airport’s metro station.
I was taking some time out of my busy sightseeing schedule to head to the airport for a COVID test, ahead of my flight to Brazil the following day. I was booked in for an appointment and happily made it in good time. However, on the return journey to the city centre, I was met with yet another broken lift (possibly, at that stage, the 10th one that day) whilst trying to get to the station’s platform. On this occasion the lift came when I called it, the doors opened, I entered, the doors closed behind me and then… nothing. I exited, then repeated the process several times in the moronic hope that it may magically fix itself somehow. I was a bit more concerned about this broken lift incident because I was alone, and I knew the only other way to get down to the platform was via a long flight of dirty stairs, which I didn’t fancy having to shuffle down on my bum, carrying my wheelchair and backpack in front of me.
Instead, I opted for the sensible approach and made my way to the ticket office in search of help. I was passed off to a lady who looked like she may have been a supervisor. She accompanied me back to the lift, all the while giving me a patronising air of ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’, as I tried to explain the issue I was having with the lift. She was adamant that the lift was working fine and refused to listen as I attempted to explain that once inside, the lift wasn’t moving from the concourse.
The supervisor pressed the button to call the lift, the doors opened, and she immediately turned to me and said “see, there you go, it’s working fine”, before proceeding to walk away back to the ticket office leaving me dumbfounded and getting more and more frustrated.
I returned to the ticket office and when she saw me, she rolled her eyes and asked what my problem was now. “Err… it’s still not working…” I said, and so she radioed for a technician and came back with me to the elevator. I genuinely get the sense now that I was being gaslighted at this stage. Things were tense, I was becoming annoyed, and the supervisor was still insisting the lift was fine and was now beginning to insinuate that I was merely being a troublemaker.
When the technician arrived, he manhandled my wheelchair and pushed me into the lift (largely against my wishes) and told me that he and the supervisor would go downstairs and call the lift, with me in it, from the platform. “Can’t one of you accompany me in the lift and the other go and call it? I don’t feel comfortable being in this lift alone when it’s being so temperamental”. The answer was a terse “no”.
It felt like an eternity, sitting there in the stiflingly hot, closed lift, wondering if, in fact, it would eventually move. After almost 10 minutes, there was still no progress, and they both returned; finally admitting that there was in fact an issue with the lift. I didn’t get an apology or any form of recognition from them that they had been wrong, and I had been right. I wasn’t even permitted a refund for the credits I had had to use, passing through the gated barrier, to return to the ticket office on two separate occasions. Instead, I had to sit and wait for the technician to do something – I’ve no idea what – to get the lift operational again. Once finished, I again requested that either one of them accompany me down in the lift, as I still didn’t trust it, but neither accepted my pleas and with that, I had no choice but to give it a go alone.
Thankfully, I got down to the platform and before long was trundling my way on the Metro, back towards the city centre and to my friend. Sadly though, by now, my anxiety, frustration, and irritation were at an all-time high, and I was becoming increasingly emotional over just how crap the accessibility was on the Lisbon Metro.
In closing, I’d like to state that I do believe it is very refreshing to see a major European city with a great number of accessible Metro stations – however, it is an annoying shame that better care is not taken to ensure the upkeep and repair of the city’s accessibility infrastructure. What benefit does good accessibility have for both disabled locals and visitors alike, if indeed the access is unusable due to it consistently being in a state of disrepair? I implore both the local authorities and the transport providers in Lisbon to improve on this.
Picture evidence of some of the broken lifts:
