Landing in Lisbon after 15 October? Your taxi into town is 16 or 19 euros
The figures come from a self-regulation protocol signed on Friday by the city council, the taxi associations, airport operator ANA and Lisbon's tourism association. They are not municipal tariffs, signing up is voluntary, and consumer group DECO has already questioned whether the arrangement is lawful.
If you land at Lisbon and walk to the taxi rank at Humberto Delgado, from 15 October you will know the price before you get in. A ride into the city costs 16 euros in the inner zone and 19 euros in the outer one, on weekdays during the day. At night, at weekends and on public holidays those become 20 and 23 euros.
The protocol was signed on Friday by Lisbon city council, the Portuguese Taxi Federation and ANTRAL, with airport operator ANA and the Lisbon Tourism Association also signing on. It is called a cooperation and self-regulation protocol, and that phrase is doing a lot of work.
Is this an official tariff?
It is not, and that is where the story gets more interesting than the headline number. The amounts were not set by the council in a tariff regulation. They were defined by the tourism association and accepted voluntarily by the taxi associations that choose to join. The whole thing is explicitly a stopgap, meant to run until Lisbon approves a proper municipal regulation for airport taxi service.
DECO, Portugal’s main consumer association, said within hours that it has doubts. Its case has two parts. The first is legal: the sector’s framework does allow fixed airport fares, but only where a council writes them into a tariff regulation, and the passenger has to keep the option of the meter. The second is practical. At an exclusive rank inside an airport, an arriving passenger cannot realistically pick a different car without leaving the zone, so voluntary describes the driver’s position rather than yours.
What to do if your driver has not signed up
The flat fare only binds the drivers who joined. If your car is outside the scheme, the meter applies exactly as before. It is worth asking which of the two you are on before the car moves, and asking for the receipt either way, since that stays compulsory.
This is the second structural change to the trade in a few weeks. The new law covering ride-hailing and taxis took effect on 1 September and, among other things, lets licensed taxi firms operate on the apps as well. Lisbon’s municipal regulation for the airport is the next step, and it is the one that will decide whether 16 and 19 euros go from an agreement to a rule.
Image: CorreiaPM / Wikimedia Commons (public domain) — file photograph
