Álvaro Bila wants drivers free to use A22 between Portimão and Lagoa
Traffic snarl-ups as a result of works around Portimão’s ER125 bridge are so bad that Portimão mayor Álvaro Bila has come up with a potentially ingenious solution that will help up to 12,000 commuters on their way.
He wants drivers to be allowed to use the A22 motorway, between Portimão and Lagoa, until the end of the year, toll-free.
Considering the A22 tolls will be abolished on January 1, 2025, Bila is not really asking that much: simply that the gantry cameras be turned off on one key stretch (ahead of time) to allow drivers to reach their destinations without fraying nerves and frustrations.
In a letter sent last week to minister for housing and infrastructure Miguel Pinto Lusa – who also happens to be a PSD MP for the Algarve – Bila outlined the “significant constraints on mobility” that the repair works are having, “much greater than originally anticipated”.
Long queues have now become ‘the norm’, not just on roads where the work is taking place but “on the alternatives”. The result, he explains, is making journeys that would normally take 10 minutes, become horrors that can take four times that amount of time, causing “great inconvenience to the population, and damage to the local economy”.
As Bila has stressed, the road currently under intervention “is an essential access to Portimão Hospital, aggravating traffic problems and compromising emergency response and safe access to healthcare”.
He equally explains that the diversion of traffic into Portimão centre has “overloaded the city’s roads, increasing journey times and creating additional difficulties for drivers”
“Although we recognise the importance of these interventions to guarantee the safety and maintenance of the infrastructure, it is my conviction, shared by the population of the municipality, that the exemption of tolls on the stretch of the A22 between Portimão and Lagoa, in both directions and during the period of the works, would contribute significantly to reducing traffic, facilitating access to the hospital, the city and neighbouring municipalities”, Bila concludes.
For now, there has been no news of a reply from Miguel Pinto Luz – a politician many saw as being an odd choice to represent the Algarve, but who with luck will have this Algarve connection in mind when he makes his decision.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
