Tuk-Tuks,
Three-Wheeled Outsiders, Make Themselves at Home in Lisbon
By RAPHAEL
MINDEROCT. 26, 2015
LISBON — Residents
of this port city of faded beauty and ornately tiled facades have
welcomed a surge of tourists in recent years who have helped turn
around its economic slide.
But the foreign
visitors, they will tell you, have also come with their share of
trade-offs. Rapid redevelopment, spurred by tax breaks granted to
foreign property buyers, has driven up rents and widened disparities.
Streets are more crowded, the traffic worse.
And then, there is
the tuk-tuk.
In just a couple of
years, about 300 of the motorized, three-wheel vehicles have swarmed
Lisbon’s narrow cobblestone streets, offering tourists an alternate
way of navigating this hilly city, famous, too, for its network of
trams and funiculars.
While visitors have
flocked to the tuk-tuk, those who live in this city of about 550,000
have begun to fume about pollution, noisier streets and a verging
“quality of living problem,” according to Miguel Gaspar, a
Portuguese transportation consultant.
“The growth of the
tuk-tuks has been such that they’re even being sold to tourists as
something typical of Lisbon, which really isn’t true,” he said.
“They’re now like pigeons, just everywhere.”
While the tuk-tuk is
no longer common in Europe, the three-wheel vehicle originated in
Italy, designed by the same engineer who developed the Vespa motor
scooter, as a cheap way to rebuild city transportation after the
devastation of World War II.
Since then, they
have become popular in the crowded cities of Asia and Africa, where
they are prized for their compact size and high maneuverability.
In Lisbon, a city
heavy with history, the tuk-tuk made rapid inroads for the same
qualities, which allow them to negotiate the old city’s many tight
corners and steep slopes and to park almost anywhere, which they do.
But what tourists
want and residents need are not always the same thing. Last month,
Lisbon’s mayor, Fernando Medina, announced restrictions on
tuk-tuks, which will limit the hours in which they can operate and
the places they can park.
The new rules will
even put some streets out of bounds for tuk-tuks, as well as require
the vehicles to run on electric engines by 2017.
Lisbon’s new
restrictions also apply to other so-called tourism entertainment
vehicles, including the yellow go-karts that have been another hit
with visitors, but that may present even more of a nuisance.
In an interview, Mr.
Medina said his goal was to “regulate but not end” the thriving
tuk-tuk business.
“Running a city is
about managing conflicts and finding the right balance between a good
tourism service and the rights of the people who work and live in
this city,” he said, “and now the tuk-tuks are changing that
balance.”
Other popular
European destinations are facing similar challenges. In Barcelona,
Spain’s tourism hub, the new left-wing mayor imposed a freeze on
new hotel projects shortly after being elected in May.
In Lisbon, as one
might expect, no one is more put out by the tuk-tuk craze than the
city’s taxi drivers. In June, police officers detained one such
driver who got into a street brawl with a tuk-tuk driver and
threatened him with a hammer.
“Tuk-tuks are
terrible news and completely unfair competition,” said Rui Tavares,
a taxi driver, who said he had spent 850 euros, or about $940, on his
taxi driver certification.
“It’s taken
effort, time and money for me to become a taxi driver while these
guys can start driving people around from Day 1, without any
professional qualification,” he said.
For the taxi
drivers, the tuk-tuk invasion has come on top of the disruption
already presented by the ride-booking service Uber, which has faced
the same kinds of legal challenges here as in several other European
countries. Uber is now appealing a Portuguese court ruling that sided
with taxi drivers against its licensing deals.
Tuk-tuk drivers say
the regulatory clampdown aimed at them is further evidence of an
overpowering taxi lobby that has led the crusade against Uber.
But they also see
the curbs as counterproductive, at a time when tourism has
spearheaded the recovery of the Portuguese economy, which required an
international bailout during the debt crisis.
“There’s now a
ridiculous transport war in Lisbon,” said José Gomes, 28, who
started driving a tuk-tuk after losing his job last year at a
clothing store. “We’re told Portugal needs more tourism to create
jobs, but then everybody wants to stop something that is clearly
popular with foreigners.”
Tuk-tuks like this
one in Lisbon are rarely seen elsewhere in Europe. The city’s taxi
drivers are not fond of them. Credit Patricia de Melo Moreira for The
New York Times
Indeed, for
tourists, the tuk-tuk experience is all about enjoying the ride
through a scenic city, rather than necessarily seeking the quickest
and cheapest way to get from Point A to Point B.
In that regard, some
tuk-tuk drivers pride themselves on playing tour guide, as well as
driver. The basic tour of historic Lisbon includes a stopover at the
Sé Cathedral, as well as other landmarks, like the São Jorge
Castle.
“We start with a
route in mind, but it’s then about building some kind of
relationship and intimacy with the clients and adapting to whatever
they want to do, however fast or slow,” said Miguel Cardoso, a
painter who has been driving a tuk-tuk for the past three months.
“If somebody wants
to spend almost the whole hour just watching the Tagus, that’s fine
by me,” he said, referring to the river on whose outlet to the
Atlantic Ocean the city sits.
Jörg Heinermann,
who heads the Portuguese subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz, the German
carmaker, argued that, even in their short time here, tuk-tuks “have
become almost as symbolic of Lisbon as its trams.”
Whenever he has
foreign visitors, Mr. Heinermann said, he tries to include a tuk-tuk
tour in their Lisbon schedule. “It’s just great to be taken
around by a Portuguese who explains his own city in his own
individual way,” he said.
“Some show you the
homes of writers and other famous people, others just want to drive
around the smallest streets possible, while others show you where to
buy your Port wine or listen to fado,” Portugal’s traditional
music, he said.
Even as the
transportation battle has heated up, some have decided to climb
aboard the tuk-tuk bandwagon rather than fight it, like José Alves,
a taxi company owner who expanded into the tuk-tuk business three
months ago.
Mr. Alves, who now
owns six tuk-tuks with his company Colourtrip, alongside his six
taxis, described the tuk-tuk as the perfect vehicle in which to
discover the city.
“A taxi takes you
to a specific place, but the tuk-tuk is the right choice if you just
want to wander around,” he said. “Lisbon has so many hills and
narrow streets that it’s really a made-for-measure place for a
tuk-tuk.”
Still, even Mr.
Alves backed the idea that tuk-tuks should be subject to restrictions
comparable to those that apply to Lisbon’s 3,500 taxis.
“The way this
market is developing,” he said, “we could have 3,000 tuk-tuks
next year, so of course rules must be set.”
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