The idea is not to go ahead with the construction of new bike paths until an audit of the entire existing network is completed. Moedas' Executive is committed to a seamless bike path along the river.
No new bike lanes will be built in Lisbon until an audit of the entire current cycling network is completed. According to what Lisboa Para Pessoas learned from close sources, Lisbon's Mayor, Carlos Moedas, ordered the freeze on pending bike lanes projects, including one that had already been awarded to a contractor - a project that the mayor had already approved. nothing will move forward until the entire current infrastructure is evaluated.
This audit will not, after all, be contracted to the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), as Moedas would have liked when he was a candidate and already as mayor. On the table now is the launching of a public tender to find an independent entity - which may become LNEC, depending on the outcome of the tender - to analyze the entire Lisbon bikeway network, pointing out problems, opportunities and solutions. This tender should be launched soon.
Bicycle path in Egas Moniz suspended
Suspended, therefore, will be bicycle path on Avenida Egas Monizthat would connect the existing bike paths on Combatentes and Lusíada avenuesThis bike path would have a bidirectional configuration and would be installed near the University Stadium, with a reduction of parking on that side and a readjustment of traffic lanes. This bike lane, according to the known project, would have a bidirectional configuration and would be installed next to the University Stadium, with a reduction of parking on that side and a readjustment of traffic lanes. A "Dutch style" solution would be built at the intersection of the new lane with the existing ones.
The public tender for the construction of the bicycle path in Egas Moniz, launched by EMEL, was closed in late 2021, already with Moedas as president, and the The contract was finally awarded on January 7th to the construction company Sanestradas for 234.8 thousand euroswith an execution period of 120 days, according to information available at the Base.gov portal. But in April, it was learned that the original project was revised; on the table was the possibility of the bike path going through the University Stadium to have less implications on the road infrastructure.
It is not known now what will happen to this already awarded public tender, but the Public Contracts Codeapproved in 2009, indicates that "when the competent body for the contracting decision decides not to award (...) it must compensate the competitors, whose proposals were not excluded, for the expenses they demonstrably incurred in the elaboration of the respective proposals"..
In 2021, two other public tenders were also launched by EMEL for the construction of bicycle paths, according to the platform SaphetyGov. One of them in Calhariz de Benfica RoadThe other was for the 1.35 million-euro bidding process for the Radial and Parque de Campismo bike path, which would make the Radial and Parque de Campismo bike paths more accessible while creating a new green pedestrian corridor; the bidding process, worth 1.35 million euros, had seven bidders but was cancelled at the end of November. The other was in César de Oliveira StreetThe 200 thousand euros tender was open until the middle of this year with two contractors interested, but it has been cancelled in the last few months.
The only certainty is a riverside bike path
The Mayor's idea is even to re-evaluate everything, including the expansion plan, before going ahead with new construction. In this year 2022, there was one bike lane built. Never published on the municipality's websitethe bike path in question consists of a small section in Bela Vistawhich starts at Rua Pardal Monteiro and goes down to Avenida Santo Condestável, in a leisurely path, until the Urban Park of Vale de Chelas. The work had been consigned in late 2021, by about 324.8 thousand euros to the company Decoverdi - Plants and Gardens, S.AThe bike path is not yet finished. The bike path is not yet finished.
Moedas' executive has said that the purpose of a complete audit of the cycling network is to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians, but at the same time casts doubt on the quality of the work of the multiple architects that Lisbon City Hall has worked with over the years and who have designed many of the city's bike pathswhich were then built by outside contractors (usually through public tender).
However, there are already some problems and suggestions for improving the current cycling network that have never been implemented. In 2020, the renowned Danish studio Copenhagenize studied three intersections of the cityin a work that was awarded for about 20 thousand euros; also the MUBi association has been collaborating with the municipality and has presented a series of improvements to the cycling network, having launched in 2021 in the Público newspaper a map of "black spots" and priorities.
On the other hand, it has been unclear what Moedas' vision is for the future of cycling in the city of Lisbon; his mandate has so far been marked by heated and polarized discussion about the Almirante Reis bike path - an issue that the Mayor brought up for debate while he was still a candidate and which generated an unparalleled popular uprising in the city, with the municipality failing to implement alternative solution that you presented.
For the rest, the only certainty of the current executive seems to be a a riverside bicycle path connecting Parque das Nações to Algés like the one that already exists today but without the existing discontinuities. The project is already being worked on with a definition of the strategy and the identification of the discontinuous points in the current track, according to the latest Written Information from the President delivered to the Municipal AssemblyThe idea is not to make a new bike path along the river, but to make some routes more direct and to solve the places where there are interruptions.
Coins will not have much time to perform his audit. Lisbon has committed to the construction of five intercity bike pathsThe Environmental Fund and now the vaunted Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) are the funding sources for this, so they have to be ready by 2026. One of these intercity bike paths is the Avenida da Índia, project pop-up presented in February 2021 and whose execution is, since then, "planned" in the Lisbon City Hall website. Still in the previous term, the cycling path was postponed for a more definitive solution that does not compromise road circulation so much in some spots. Now, this bike path will most likely be built at the expense of pedestrian space along the entire length of the Avenue, contrary to the original idea that foresaw only a section shared between pedestrians and cyclists in the Alcântara area.
The Avenida da Índia bike path will be part of the Restelo-Algés intermunicipal axis. This corridor also includes a cycle track on Avenida das Descobertas, in Restelo; the two cycle paths (the one to India and the one to Descobertas) should meet at the Algés traffic circle and connect to Oeiras there. The other four inter-municipal bike paths are planned in the following axes Lumiar-Odivelas (by Calçada de Carriche), Benfica-Amadora (through Venezuela Street), Olivais-Moscavide (through the Rotunda Matilde Bensaúde/Estrada da Circunvalação) and Parque das Nações-Sacavém (includes the Trancão cyclopedestrian bridge).
The current EMEL's Activities Plan and BudgetThe 2022-2025 plan, approved in early January, foresaw only 17 km of bike lanes between now and next year.
