The Dona Maria II bridge rebuilding project and the opening of the tendering period for the contract have at last been approved at a special meeting of Lagos council.
It is anticipated that the work will be completed before the summer of 2015. The twelve arches will be strengthened and the pedestrian and bicycle lanes will be given more space.
At the meeting, Lagos council approved the opening of the tendering process for the contract and set a price of €950,000 with an execution time of 240 days.
The bridge at the eastern approach to Lagos will be repaired after a two year closure and in April Joaquina Matos, the Lagos mayor, said that an application for EU funding has been successful and the work could start this summer.
The road and pedestrian bridge was closed two years ago due to a risk of collapse as confirmed by Portugal's National Laboratory of Civil Engineering.
Local taxpayers will have to chip in 35% of the final bill for what the mayor described as a “priority project."
The bridge has Roman traces, there is no precise date for its original construction, and suffered major damage during the 1755 earthquake and was rebuilt in 1783. The last major repair work was around 1960.
