Lagoa council appears finally to have woken up to the situation on the Algarve’s roads, referring to "the calamitous road management in the region" in a motion tabled by the Left Bloc that now will be sent to Lisbon.
Lagoa council wants to let the national political parties, including the Government and the President of the Republic, know that the road situation has been getting worse in the Algarve.
The motion backs up what the anti-tolls group CUVI and others have been saying all along, that the non-motorway roads are congested, accidents are on the increase and the death rate has risen 50% in the last two years which is against a downward trend in the rest of Portugal.
This situation, according to the written submission, ‘doubly affects the Algarve’ as tourists use the roads as well as locals.
The motion claims also that work carried out on the EN125 can reduce accidents, but it will not significantly change the situation, "which is that the Algarve has two regional traffic routes, one is under-used and the other is really congested."
So at last the stalwart councillors of Lagoa have decided to complain that the Algarve’s mobility management is "catastrophic" for all drivers in the region, for small businesses and for the image of the Algarve.
As the Lagoa section of the EN125 is one of the main congestion points in the region, it must have been an easy decision finally to complain.
One of the key points on CUVI’s list of anti-toll actions is for AMAL, the Algarve mayors group, to get off their collective behinds and add their weight to the campaign to do away with the toll system on the Via do Infante, a system which is economically unjustifiable yet remains part of the government’s raft of measure to control and punish the Algarve which, according to the national Left Bloc, is ‘despised’ by the Passos Coelho coalition.
