Getting around Madeira: the bus network, the car, and what is unresolved

SIGA, and the company that no longer exists

SIGA is the road passenger transport network management system covering the whole of Madeira and Porto Santo, in operation since 1 July 2024. It replaced the previous separate operator arrangements.

Three operators run inside it. Horários do Funchal handles Funchal urban and interurban services. SIGA Rodoeste covers western Madeira. Companhia de Autocarros da Madeira, CAM, covers the east, and CAM is the operator that replaced the former SAM brand. The network is managed by TiiM under the regional transport authority.

Guides written before July 2024 describe three independent companies competing with separate tickets. That structure is gone. If a page still tells you to catch a SAM bus, it is describing a company that has been renamed and a fare system that has been replaced.

What a bus costs

Fares come from Portaria n.º 128/2026, de 23 de março, amending Portaria n.º 428/2025, published in the Jornal Oficial and in force from 1 April 2026. All figures include VAT.

Paid on board, a single municipal journey is €2.05*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 and an intermunicipal journey €2.65*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026. Pre-purchased onto a GIRO card the same journeys are €1.45*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 and €2.00*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026. Child fares are lower on all four.

The GIRO card

GIRO is the contactless smartcard used across SIGA. There are two kinds. The GIRO bilhete is not personal and can be passed on, though each passenger has to hold one. The GIRO passe is personalised, non-transferable and issued only to residents.

A single pre-purchased journey allows several boardings within 45 minutes*, source: SIGA, read August 26, 2026 on a municipal ticket or 90 minutes*, source: SIGA, read August 26, 2026 on an intermunicipal one. Cards and loads are sold at SIGA operator service desks and participating Payshop agents.

The day tickets, and the one visitors actually want

The Bilhete Diário is a pre-purchased day ticket loaded onto a GIRO bilhete, valid for one, two, three, five or seven days from first validation, with unlimited travel inside the purchased zones. It starts at €4.95 municipal*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 for a municipal day and runs to €23.50 municipal*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 for a seven-day intermunicipal. It excludes the Aerobus.

The Bilhete Regional Turístico is the visitor product, available since 22 January 2026. It gives unlimited travel across the whole Autonomous Region including the Aerobus, from €13.75*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 for twenty-four hours to €36.00*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 for a week, with child rates roughly half.

The airport bus

The Aerobus is €6.70*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 paid on board or €5.55*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 pre-purchased onto a GIRO bilhete. A return product at €9.00*, source: Jornal Oficial da RAM, from 1 April 2026, read August 26, 2026 appears in the tariff order, with SIGA noting these titles become available on a date to be announced.

No official distance in kilometres or drive time from the airport into Funchal could be sourced. The airport operator’s own site is behind a bot-protection layer and no regional government page states a figure. The numbers that circulate come from secondary travel sites, and they are not repeated here.

Route numbers, and why there are almost none here

SIGA’s front page is a JavaScript application, but its timetable pages are ordinary server-rendered HTML and carry the operator’s own route numbering, including the table mapping the old numbers onto the new three-digit ones. Route numbers on this page come from there and nowhere else.

No route numbers are recorded here. Every Madeiran bus route was renumbered to a three-digit scheme with effect from 9 March 2026, and the operators’ static pages still carry the old two-digit numbers — so a number copied from one of them may now belong to a different route on the other side of the island. Timetables and current numbers are published on the SIGA site, and that is where they should be read on the day.

Whether a car is necessary

For a trip built around trailheads, viewpoints and the north and west coasts, in practical terms yes. The classified trailheads at Rabaçal on ER 105, Fanal on ER 209, Ribeiro Frio on ER 103 and ER 303, Achada do Teixeira, Queimadas and Baía d’Abra are all rural road ends. A stay confined to Funchal does not need a car at all.

The roads

Main roads are designated VR, the expressways, and ER, the regional roads. The mountain and plateau roads that official trailhead descriptions reference are ER 105 for Paúl da Serra and Rabaçal, ER 209 for Fanal and Curral Falso, ER 103 and ER 303 for Ribeiro Frio, and ER 102 for Portela.

Access roads to Curral das Freiras, Eira do Serrado, Achadas da Cruz and the plateau are steep and tightly wound. The hazard that matters most is not gradient, though: it is fog. The official Fanal page notes fog on the plateau, and the same fog that makes Fanal photogenic makes ER 209 a genuinely dangerous drive.

What is not on this page

No official source could be found for gradient percentages or typical rental prices, so neither appears. Funchal parking tariffs are published in the municipal fees table and are set out on the driving guide rather than repeated here. The one parking figure that is published is at the mountain viewpoint: Pico do Areeiro is €4.00 per hour*, source: Visit Madeira, read August 26, 2026.

Taxis, and the ride-hailing question nobody can answer

Taxis are widely available across Funchal, at ranks throughout the municipality, on the main avenues and near the principal hotels. The tourism board notes that many vehicles carry card terminals, on-board wi-fi and air conditioning, and that some are approved for wheelchair transport.

No official taxi tariff table, and no regulated airport-to-Funchal fare, could be sourced from the regional government or from a municipality. A figure circulates on commercial transfer sites. It has no official basis and it is not repeated here.

Uber and Bolt: genuinely unresolved

Ride-hailing, TVDE in Portuguese law, does operate: Monte Palace lists it among the ways to reach the garden. What is unclear is whether new licences are being issued.

A regional resolution suspended the issuing of TVDE operator licences and driver registrations for six months from around 12 September 2025. On 5 March 2026 the regional government extended that suspension by four months, effective from 13 March 2026. An earlier decree-law on the subject was returned by the Representative of the Republic as unconstitutional, and a Constitutional Court ruling was reported as still pending.

That four-month extension would have expired around 13 July 2026, before this page was written. No source states what happened at that point. The underlying facts come from news outlets rather than from the gazette text itself. So the current status is unknown, and it is written here as unknown. Anyone depending on a ride-hailing app should check before arriving rather than after.

The ferry to Porto Santo

Porto Santo Line runs the Lobo Marinho between Funchal and Vila Baleira. Timetables are published month by month, and the number of extra daily sailings varies by month and by day of the week, with the summer months carrying the most.

In the August 2026 timetable, Funchal departures were listed at 08:00 every day with additional sailings on some days, and Porto Santo departures at 20:00 every day with extras on some days.

The operator does not publish a crossing duration. Its timetable lists departure times only, in two columns, with no arrival times, so no scheduled journey length can be derived from source. Third-party ferry booking sites quote a figure. It is not an operator figure, and it is not stated here as fact. Sailings are weather-dependent and the operator re-times or cancels them in heavy seas.

What a day on Porto Santo actually looks like, and why the fixed return sailing is the constraint on it, is in the entry on the day cruise. The order that makes the rest of the island work without backtracking is the ten-day route, and the trail bookings that have to happen before any of it is in the levada guide.