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Getting from Lisbon to Guimarães can be an odyssey of more than seven hours. The situation has worsened since, during the period of confinement, last March, the Alfa Pendular stopped reaching the Cot City.
A passenger who takes the Alfa Pendular, in Lisbon-Santa Apolónia, at 2:00 p.m., will only be able to reach Guimarães after almost five hours.
This composition will arrive in Porto at 4:58 p.m. and will travel to Braga. As there is no urban train to Guimarães at this time, the passenger must wait half an hour for the urban train. At 5:30 p.m., it embarks on the urban route to Guimarães and reaches its destination at 6 p.m. 37, four hours and 45 minutes after leaving the capital.
If this passenger had chosen to travel to Braga, he did not need to change trains at the Campanhã station, in Porto, and arrived in Braga an hour earlier.
In the worst case scenario, a passenger leaving Lisbon by Intercity at 12:30, takes seven hours and 13 minutes to get to Guimarães.
The city of Guimarães currently has a direct connection with Lisbon in each direction, through Intercities (it goes at 4:41 p.m. and comes at 11:30 a.m.), with a travel time of four hours and 19 minutes. It is about 20 minutes longer than the same type of trains on the Braga line. However, on the Braga line, there are currently three direct connections to the capital in each direction: two by Alfa Pendular (it goes at 5:45 am and 5:54 pm and arrives at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm ) and an Intercities road (it goes at 4:41 pm and will arrive at 11:30).
Until March 24, there was a connection from Alfa to Lisbon, from Guimarães. The train left Guimarães at 06:39, arrived in Santa Apolónia at 10:40, the return train, left Lisbon at 20:00 and arrived at Cradle of the city one minute after midnight.
CP claimed a drop in the volume of passengers transported by 85% and made an adjustment in the offer of Alfa and Interdades, throughout the country. According to CP, after the cut, 54% of the trains that make up the regular offer of Alfa and Interdades remained in operation. These changes were made six days after the president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, decreed a state of emergency, on March 18.
For Guimarães, this abolition meant the end of the only “fast” connection with Lisbon. Those who used the train for business trips to the capital were left with no alternative. “I stopped using the train, or I left in the middle of Sunday afternoon or I missed all classes on Monday,” says Madalena Moura.
On CP’s information hotline, when asked about the replacement of the Alfa service in Guimarães, the answer is: “there is no provision for the replacement of the service. The schedules that we have available are those that are on the site, you should consult and check the changes ”.
Minho questioned the PC and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing about the return of the Alfa service to Guimarães, but has not received any answers yet.
The Guimarães City Council did not comment on this matter either.
“Alfa is not coming, the government has already decided”, Mariana Silva
Who has kept the issue alive is the deputy of the Ecological Party “Os Verdes” (ENP). “Alfa is not coming, the government has already decided,” he stated categorically, during a conference held at the headquarters of the Associação Artística Vimaranense, on Friday the 9. “We know that there is, on the part of the government, a vision that there are no passengers” added the deputy.
The ENP is also awaiting clarification from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing. “If the Municipality does not pressure Alfa, it will not return,” reinforces Mariana Silva. The deputy says that one of the statements of the PC is that it cannot have an Alpha detained in Guimarães all day. But the parliamentarian does not agree with this line of argument, because, “last year there was an additional stopover in Vizela, this shows that there is a need for the service, contrary to what they say.”
In 2018, there were already problems with the Alfa service, with CP disrupting trains in Porto, causing passengers heading to Guimarães to switch to Interdades. At the time, it was protests by passengers, including Labor Court judges, using Alfa on Wednesday that led CP to back down.
In the current context, anyone who wants to travel from Guimarães to Lisbon can do it by bus, with prices starting from 14.99 euros and has several daily runs. On the train, prices start at 26.6 euros (2nd class) or 38.65 euros (1st class) and there is only one alternative daily, in the middle of the day.
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