Metro do Porto opens on old railway tracks: 7 December 2002

On Saturday 7 December 2002 the Metro do Porto was officially opened at the new Casa da Música station. The Prime Minister, José Manuel Durão Barroso, presided. About a thousand people turned out for what the company called day one of the metro.1 source1 source

The line ran 11.8 kilometres, from Trindade in central Porto to Senhor de Matosinhos beside the port of Leixões, and had 18 stations. Its trains were Eurotrams, assembled by Bombardier at Amadora, near Lisbon, from parts made in Portugal, Italy and England. The board decided that nobody would pay to ride until the end of the year.2 sources2 sources

The trains were already familiar to some. Since 29 June 2002 they had carried passengers on trial between Câmara de Matosinhos and Viso, and in 19 weeks of experimental running about 700,000 people had tried them. In September the trial service reached Senhor de Matosinhos, running in the street along Rua Brito Capelo. Commercial service began on 1 January 2003, and at 6.55pm on 6 March the system recorded its millionth validation.1 source1 source

The man who had chaired the company for most of the building of the first line did not live to see it. José Vieira de Carvalho, chairman since October 1999, died on 1 June 2002, aged 64. Valentim Loureiro, mayor of Gondomar and president of the Porto Metropolitan Board, which represented the largest shareholder, took his place, at first on an interim basis.1 source1 source

Porto at the end of the 1980s was choked with traffic. The inner ring road had no link to the Avenida da Boavista, the Freixo bridge existed only on paper, and trains to Vila Nova de Gaia still crossed the Douro on the single track of the Maria Pia bridge, opened in 1877. Carlos Brito, president of STCP, the city's bus and tram company, wrote that thousands of hours were lost in jams every day.2 sources2 sources

The city did have railways reaching into its northern suburbs. On 1 October 1875 a private company opened a 900 mm narrow-gauge line from Porto-Boavista to Póvoa de Varzim, and in April 1884 another company opened a line from Trofa to Guimarães. Under government pressure the two merged early in 1927, converted the Póvoa line to metre gauge and in 1932 opened a link from Senhora da Hora to Trofa. Work began at about the same time on a tunnel to a new terminus at Praça da Trindade, in the city centre.1 source1 source

Steam on these lines gave way to diesel only in 1976 and 1977, and the Póvoa to Famalicão branch closed at the end of 1995. Trains from Póvoa and Trofa kept running into Trindade until the metro works began.1 source1 source

The project began on paper in September 1989, when STCP published a study called Transporte Colectivo em Sítio Próprio, public transport on its own right of way. It proposed light rail for the Porto metropolitan area and spoke, for the first time, of a network of modern trams. In 1990 a survey for the city council found that only 4 per cent of Porto residents believed a metro would be built. The mayor, Fernando Gomes, said it would be running within ten years.2 sources2 sources

Decree-Law 71/93 of 10 March 1993 set out the legal framework and gave a public company, Metro do Porto, the exclusive right to run a light-rail system in the region. The company was formed that August. After a restructuring in 1999 the Porto Metropolitan Area held 60 per cent of the shares, STCP 25 per cent, the national railway CP 10 per cent and the state 5 per cent.3 sources3 sources

An international tender went out in December 1994 and drew four consortia. In January 1996 the company published its reference plan, four lines and about 70 kilometres, and in November 1997 it chose the Normetro consortium to design, build, equip and run the system. The contracts were signed on 16 December 1998, the day after the publication of Decree-Law 394-A/98, which set the terms of a 50-year concession for Metro do Porto. A month earlier the European Investment Bank had approved a loan of 109 million contos, about €544 million (a conto was a thousand escudos).3 sources3 sources

The first phase reused the old lines wherever it could. From 28 April 2001 trains no longer ran between Trindade and Senhora da Hora, so that the track could be rebuilt for the metro. On 24 February 2002, according to Metro do Porto, CP closed the rest of the Póvoa and Trofa lines and the company laid on replacement buses. It called this the end of the train's era and the start of the metro's. A British railway archive dates the closure to 29 June 2002 instead.2 sources2 sources

Under a 1998 protocol between the state, the metropolitan area, CP and REFER, the rail infrastructure company, 255 railway workers from the two lines moved to Metro do Porto. The Póvoa line was doubled, which the original plan had not included, and reopened as Line B, the red line, in 2005 and 2006. The Trofa line became Line C, the green line, but was converted only as far as ISMAI, in Maia. Trofa itself still has no metro.5 sources5 sources

Through the old centre the metro had to go underground. Porto stands on granite, but granite weathered to very different depths, from sound rock to something close to soil, crossed by old wells and hand-dug water galleries called minas. Under parts of the historic centre the tunnels passed only three or four metres below the surface.3 sources3 sources

The first tunnel-boring machine, a Herrenknecht earth-pressure shield nicknamed Micas, started from Campanhã towards Trindade on 14 July 2000, by the company's account (the trade journal Tunnels & Tunnelling says June). After about 400 metres, damage to buildings above stopped it. There were three major collapses, in October 2000, December 2000 and January 2001, and in December 2000 an elderly woman died when her house fell in.3 sources3 sources

The machine stood idle for about nine months. Contractors and designers then formed a joint team that met the client every day to go over the excavation data and the monitoring of the buildings near each face. Micas broke through at Trindade on 21 October 2002, watched by dozens of workers and passers-by. The company puts the drive at 2.3 kilometres, Tunnels & Tunnelling at 2.5.3 sources3 sources

A second machine set off from Salgueiros in June 2002 and reached Trindade on 16 October 2003. When the Trindade to Ponte tunnel was finished that November, all of the first phase's tunnels, almost 7 kilometres, had been dug. They carried their first passengers in June 2004, when Line A was extended east under the centre to the Estádio do Dragão. The extension was inaugurated on 5 June and opened to the public the next day.2 sources2 sources

Metro do Porto put one architect in charge of the look of the whole system. Eduardo Souto de Moura, born in Porto in 1952, had worked for Álvaro Siza for five years as a student. He was chief architect of the first phase from 1997 to 2005, leading the other designers. The company credits him with getting them to talk problems through, always aiming at a solution.3 sources3 sources

At street level the metro corridor came first. The engineering fixed the level of the rails, and everything else, from traffic lanes to parking and pavements, was fitted into the space left between the tracks and the front doors. Streets were dug up and rebuilt with new sewers, gas pipes and cables, with granite setts, tarmac or grass between the rails, and with new squares and boulevards such as the Avenida da República.1 source1 source

Underground, each station was shaped to its site. At Casa da Música a folded concrete roof doubles as a canopy for the bus station, and two round skylights bring daylight down to the lower levels. At Salgueiros a faceted skylight of blue glass colours the light on the lower platform, and Marquês is an ellipse in plan, extruded straight down.1 source1 source

When Souto de Moura won the Pritzker Prize in 2011, the jury mentioned the metro: by modifying pavements, textures, pathways and public spaces for it, they wrote, he had given public space new significance. In 2013 Harvard's Graduate School of Design gave its Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design jointly to the Porto metro and to a project in Medellín, Colombia.3 sources3 sources

The project was meant to be paid for largely with grants. In the original plan, subsidies from European funds and the Portuguese state were to cover 42 per cent of the investment. Then the design grew: the Póvoa line was doubled, a branch to the airport was added, Line A was extended to Antas and the crossing of the Avenida de França was redesigned. The work of fitting the metro into the streets grew too, and the road-safety and network-control systems were redesigned from scratch.1 source1 source

By 2006, according to the evaluation Metro do Porto published as its white paper in 2008, investment had almost doubled, to €2,071.7 million, and grants covered only 24 per cent of it. Three quarters was borrowed.1 source1 source

The European Investment Bank lent €803.7 million in tranches signed between 1998 and 2008. By the end of 2012, after the extensions to Fânzeres and Santo Ovídio had been finished, cumulative investment had reached €2,633 million and the company's net interest-bearing debt about €2,710 million. Metro do Porto reckoned that, over the 19 years from 1994, about €1,755 million of that debt had paid for construction and about €750 million for interest and other financial charges.1 source1 source

Expansion came quickly. On 5 June 2004, a week before Portugal hosted the European Football Championship, Line A was extended through the new tunnel to the Estádio do Dragão, and during the tournament the metro carried about 30 per cent of the spectators at the Dragão and Bessa stadiums. Line B opened to Pedras Rubras in March 2005 and Line C to Fórum Maia in July.1 source1 source

The most striking addition opened on 17 September 2005. Line D, the yellow line, ran from Câmara Gaia to Pólo Universitário, and its trains crossed the Douro on the upper deck of the Luís I bridge of 1886, whose story is told in a separate article. To free the deck for the metro alone, Metro do Porto had built a new road bridge, the Ponte do Infante, which opened on 30 March 2003.2 sources2 sources

In 2006 Line B reached Póvoa de Varzim and Line C reached ISMAI, and on 27 May Line E made Porto's the first airport in Portugal served by a metro. By the end of that year the first phase was complete: 58.9 kilometres and 69 stations, 14 of them underground. Line F, to Fânzeres in Gondomar, followed on 2 January 2011.2 sources2 sources

Metro do Porto counts its traffic in validations, the number of times tickets and travel cards are validated, and treats each one as a passenger. Validations rose from 6 million in 2003 to 71.4 million in 2019, fell to 39.4 million in the first year of the pandemic and then passed the old peak, reaching 94.5 million in 2025. The company puts part of the latest rise down to fares: in December 2024 free travel passes, until then only for students, were extended to everyone aged 23 and under.2 sources2 sources

The network now serves seven municipalities, with 85 stations, 15 of them underground, and a fleet of 120 vehicles. It is still growing. The Pink Line, about three kilometres long between São Bento and Casa da Música, was tested end to end for the first time in October 2026 and is due to open at the end of the first quarter of 2027, about three years late, at a total cost close to €420 million against a contract of almost €190 million.2 sources2 sources

The Ruby Line, 6.4 kilometres from Casa da Música to Santo Ovídio in Gaia, will cross the Douro on a new bridge named after Antónia Ferreira, the nineteenth-century port wine businesswoman. Its schedule now runs to July 2028, at a cost of €487.9 million.2 sources2 sources