Lisbon’s city council has tasked a team of experts with designing a new mechanism to ensure the safety of the Gloria funicular railway that had a deadly crash last week and will remain closed until its revamp, a city official said on Monday.
“We must guarantee maximum security,” the council’s Vice President, Filipe Anacoreta Correia, told reporters, adding the country needed to be reassured that this was the case before the cable car could reopen.
The group will include technicians from municipal public transport company Carris, which operates the funicular, and experts from universities, Portugal’s engineering regulatory organization, and national civil engineering laboratory LNEC, Correia added.
During an extraordinary meeting, the council also voted to give the expert team the final say on when it was safe to resume the funicular’s operation. A preliminary report said problems with a cable likely caused the funicular railway popular with tourists to hurtle down a hill, killing at least 16 people and injuring another 22 when it crashed into a building.
It said the accident happened in just 50 seconds because, although the pneumatic and manual brakes were activated, they did not have enough capacity to stop the funicular, and there was no other redundant safety system.
Gloria, which opened in 1885, is one of three old funiculars operated by Carris and is used by tourists as well as local residents.
The line connects Lisbon’s downtown area near the Restauradores Square with the Bairro Alto and transports around 3 million people a year.
Portugal’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations on Saturday released its first investigative report into the crash.
The report said the cabins had travelled “not more than about six meters” when they “suddenly lost the balancing force provided by the cable connecting them.”
“Cabin No. 2 suddenly reversed, its movement halting approximately 10 meters beyond due to its partial excursion past the end of the track and the burial of the underside of the trambolho (trolley) at the end of the cable trench,” it added.
“Cabin No. 1, at the top of Calcada da Gloria, continued its downward movement, increasing its speed.
The report added: “The cabin’s brakeman immediately applied the pneumatic brake and the hand brake to try to halt the movement. These actions had no effect in stopping or reducing the cabin’s speed, and it continued accelerating down the slope.”
The report added an examination of the wreckage showed “the connecting cable had given way” at the attachment point to the cabin at the top of the hill.
A final report will be published later.
