It is not suspended. It's actually cancelled. Lisbon City Hall has already deleted Moedas' project for the Almirante Reis bike path from its website.
The question remained whether Carlos Moedas had merely suspended or even canceled his project for a third pop-up on Almirante Reis, but the removal of the project from the municipality's website this week and an interview published in Expresso now clarify the whole issue. The new bike lane is indeed canceled and Moedas wants to launch a ideas competition for young architects to rethink the avenue as a whole.
"We reached a point where Almirante Reis became central to the discussion. And I thought we should lower the discussion and listen to the people. Listen to the councillors. I could have said 'I'll do what I want'. But I don't think I should do that, so as not to polarize the discussion even more"said Carlos Moedas in an interview with the newspaper Expressolaunched this week. So he said, "I readjusted the strategy due to the political polarization we had in this case" e "we're going to open a competition for young architects to decide how we look at a new Almirante Reis, re-profiled".
The Mayor of Lisbon says "politics is about adapting to our circumstances" and that no "no problems at all in readjusting the strategy". "What Lisboners want is for things to be done quietly, without shouting"he said in the same interview. Moedas points out that the cycle path is "a political case of a certain activism, of a radical left, saying that you can't touch the bike path" and a polarization was generated "negative for Lisbon residents" which "it wasn't worth it" food. "What I want is to structurally change Almirante Reis."
Carlos Moedas continues to believe that the current cycle path is "terrible" e "a mistake" and says that "it's badly done"but now admits that "there was no point in doing something provisional now when we're going to have a work such as the drainage plan“. "There are so many other things to do in mobility... Let's look at the long term [for Almirante Reis] and see what we want to do." In addition, Moedas believes that he must "to govern the city, and not to create such a polarization between my executive that we're going to be more and more each on our own".
When he was still a candidate, Carlos Moedas promised to put an end to the Almirante Reis cycle path. After being elected, he readjusted his strategy and presented a solution that kept the bike lane on that avenueIt would have cost the city between 290,000 and 400,000 euros. Now, he has readjusted his strategy, because even though he committed to maintaining a cycle lane on Almirante Reis, Moedas continued to come under pressure from the various left-wing parties that sit on Lisbon City Council, as well as from various spontaneous and organized civil society movements.
