Questioned about the legal framework deficiencies in Carris’s transportation systems to ensure proper oversight and user safety, Carlos Moedas expressed ignorance of this information contained in the preliminary report by the Office for Prevention and Investigation of Aircraft and Rail Accidents (GPIAAF), released on Monday, regarding the Glória elevator accident.
“I am not aware of that. What I know from the report is related to elevators and lifts. We are not talking about daily trams here,” stated the social-democratic mayor on the sidelines of the “Gebalis 30 Years – Challenges of Municipal Housing Management” conference.
“Lisboans know that Carris has been a company that has safely transported millions of people over the years, raising doubts about the company’s safety at the level of buses and trams, I think that is not true, never was. People can be safe when traveling by tram or bus. What we are discussing here is elevators, and the elevators are halted,” he declared.
According to the GPIAAF’s preliminary report on the Glória elevator accident on September 3, which resulted in 16 fatalities and about two dozen injuries among Portuguese and foreigners of various nationalities, the lifts like Glória and Lavra in Lisbon, as well as Carris’s trams, are not under the supervision of the Institute for Mobility and Transport (IMT), being only under the regulation of the managing company itself.
The GPIAAF “noted that Carris’s trams” are “in the same situation [without independent supervision], as there is no legal framework for the technical regulation and safety of trams operating on non-dedicated tracks.”
“Thus, the safety conditions of historical, modernized, or modern trams operating on public streets along with road vehicles, both upon entry into service and during their operational life,” are not subject, in Portugal, “to compliance with any rules other than those defined by the company itself, nor, importantly, to any type of independent oversight,” it concluded.
On Tuesday, the Minister of Infrastructure stated that the Government detected, following the Glória elevator accident in Lisbon, a gap in the supervision of these transports and immediately mandated the IMT to address it.
