The Secretary of State for Mobility stated, this Tuesday, that the Oeiras Automatic Urban Transport System (SATUO) and the Sustainable Intermodal Line (LIOS) are “good examples” of central and local public policies for mobility in metropolitan areas.
Cristina Pinto Dias spoke at the closing of the VII edition of the Portugal Mobi Summit, which took place this Tuesday in Oeiras, in the district of Lisbon, and where issues of urban mobility and the ‘Oeiras Move’ strategy were addressed, under the responsibility of municipal company that provides integrated mobility, logistics and parking solutions from Parques Tajo.
The official highlighted several projects that the Government has carried out since taking office, seven months ago, on the path towards decarbonization and urban mobility, highlighting the “good example” of the two mobility projects SATUO and LIOS, in terms of “public service”. policies at both the central and local levels.
The Secretary of State recalled that for LIOS “there is already guaranteed European financing”, while for SATUO “work is being done on community financing”.
LIOS is a surface light metro project that will connect areas between Alcântara (Lisbon) and Cruz Quebrada (Oeiras), on the one hand, and between Santa Apolónia (Lisbon) and Sacavém, on the other, connecting these municipalities.
SATUO, the Oeiras surface metro, was in operation between 2004 and 2015 and ran just over a kilometer connecting the Paço de Arcos railway station (Cascais line), called Navegantes, and the Fórum station, in the Parque Shopping Center from Oeiras.
Its extension was planned to the north to the Agualva-Cacém train station (Sintra line).
In the panel that brought together the presidents of the Chambers of Oeiras and Aveiro, Isaltino Morais and Ribau Esteves, respectively, the vice president of the Chamber of Cascais, Nuno Piteira Lopes, and the first secretary of the Executive Committee of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Carlos Humberto de Carvalho advocated for greater planning as a mobility challenge.
All those responsible said that one of the main challenges for the Metropolitan Areas (MA) is “planning and having a strategic vision” so that trips by private car decrease, giving as an example that only in Lisbon AM (AML) there is more than one million and a half pendulum movements every day.
For Carlos Humberto, in AML “there is not a single problem, but multiple ones,” recalling the need to solve the problem of interfaces between different means of transportation, that is, their lack of articulation.
“We need to work better together to create solutions. We achieved many things with free transportation, new careers, the constant growth of demand, but the problems cannot be combated only with municipal decisions, there must also be intervention from the Government,” he highlighted.
For his part, Isaltino Morais defended the importance of reducing dependence on the car, also highlighting the need for planning because the growth of a certain territory is often not accompanied by its needs in terms of infrastructure or transportation.
The mayor of Oeiras recalled the case of the A5 (highway that connects Lisbon with Cascais) that, when it was built, neither the Tagus Park, where 14,000 people work, nor the Lagoas Park, with about 10,000, existed in his municipality. people. They commute daily and there have been no route changes consistent with the growth in automobile traffic.
“When the A5 was built there was nothing like it. From the Oeiras tollbooth cars only left in the morning towards Lisbon and at night in the opposite direction to Cascais. Now [o trânsito] every day it goes both ways,” he stated, highlighting that the A5 is “a wall that defines the north and south of the municipality and that only makes it difficult.”
For his part, Nuno Piteira Lopes argued that “Cascais is not an island because it is at the end of the road,” explaining that the problem is not so much the lack of planning, but rather the lack of execution of the solutions found.
“We are experts in planning. The A5 was designed in 1930, the Cascais CP turned 135 years old and, if we think about 40/50 years ago, in the squares of Oeiras, Lisbon and Cascais you could not see cars, but trees and people and today they are cars. parks,” he said.
Nuno Piteira Lopes also highlighted that in the 70s, 80s and 90s “the use of own vehicles was cultivated” and, today, it is necessary to reach young people and reverse the situation, taking into account the “very, very low” number. ” of The use of public transport by young people is only 8% in the municipality.
Like the mayor of Oeiras, Nuno Piteira Lopes also defends a corridor dedicated to public transport (BRT) on the A5, an old idea that already has the agreement of three municipalities (Lisbon, Cascais and Oeiras) but has not yet been implemented. progressed.
Source: Observadora
