From April 26, Baixa and the riverside area will have local traffic with the implementation of new signage and information, with the aim of diverting all through traffic to the so-called 5th ring road. There will be no physical roadblocks, but enforcement, awareness-raising and a permanent evaluation of the plan are promised....
The works of General Drainage Plan in Avenida da Liberdade and Santa Apolónia, the works of repairing Rua do Arsenal and the northern top of the Praça do Comércio, the repair of the collector that broke down in Rua da Pratathe work of requalification of the collector sewer of the Infante Dom Henrique Avenue and the Metro expansion works in the Santos area. There are several "structural works" underway on Lisbon's waterfront that have forced Lisbon City Hall to present a specific "mobility plan" for this area, with traffic restrictions that, if they go well, could become permanent.
The plan was presented this Tuesday, April 18, at a press conference by the Mayor, Carlos Moedas, and the Vice President, Filipe Anacoreta Correia, who coordinates the Mobility portfolio. Although it is not a true ZER as the one presented and cancelled in the previous term, it recovers some of the virtues of this one, namely the reduction of crossing traffic in the historic area of the city.
Since the beginning of some of the above mentioned works, the heart of Lisbon has suffered great pressure in terms of road circulation, with several detours that have caused conditioning in some parts, as the President of the Santa Maria Maior Parish Council, Miguel Coelho, has been showing on his Facebook profile. Therefore, the solution - or patch - is to restrict and invite all cars that do not have Baixa as a destination to use the so-called 5th Circular, going around the city.
"We are at a time when we have construction work followed by construction work and that is essential for the city"Carlos Moedas emphasized when presenting the constraints to journalists. "What I asked the vice president and the [municipal] services to do was to do something that hadn't been done before: to look at the city as a whole in terms of mobility."
The 5th Circular is one of the five circular roads designed to distribute traffic in the city of Lisbon and will be "activated" to allow the diversion of all cars that are not destined for the historic area and that were just crossing. The idea is that drivers will use this 5th Circular and then access, as local transit, the downtown area or the waterfront, if these are their destinations. This 5th Circular is formed by Infante Santo Avenue, Álvares Cabral Avenue, Alexandre Herculano Street, Almirante Reis Avenue, Morais Soares Street and Mouzinho de Albuquerque Avenue.
There will be no physical blockages (except for the cuts at the construction sites), but there will be signs indicating local traffic at the entrances to the downtown area and to the waterfront, and the municipal police have promised to monitor the area. It is intended that only residents, merchants, and other people who need to access these territories - whatever their reason (visiting friends or family, work, medical aid, informal caregivers, shopping, etc.) - should travel there by car, using the aforementioned ring road. Whatever is not that local traffic (i.e. anything that is crossing traffic) is invited to go around.
Other important aspects:
"We're going to have to reduce traffic downtown"Moedas said, but "in the gradual way that I have always advocated". The 5th Circular is "the ultimate alternative to prevent people who don't have to come downtown from coming downtown" And it's something that, from the mayor's perspective, "it was never explained to the people". Moedas made it clear that those who work or live downtown will still be able to go downtown. "But we'll be influencing the behavior of other people coming into this 5th Circular" through this plan, which relies mainly on signage, awareness, and information.
The new mobility plan for the riverfront and its respective constraints can be consulted on this page on the Lisbon Chamber website. They will be in effect as of April 26, that is, as of next Wednesday.
As part of the plan to expand the Lisbon Metro network and define the Circular Line, a new phase in the construction of Santos station will begin, which implies new constraints on circulation in the vicinity of this area of the city and which will also be applied as of the 26th. Therefore, until the end of December 2024, road traffic will be interrupted on Avenida D. Carlos I, in the Largo Vitorino Damásio area, in the blocks between Rua da Boavista and Rua D. Luís I.
"We are working towards a better city but until then you have to face some changes, you have to change"said the Vice President, who presented to the media the measures in greater detail. The mobility plan for the downtown area and the riverfront will begin to apply on April 26 and has no defined end date, assuming that the restrictions can become definitiveThis will allow the creation of a true Zone of Reduced Emissions (ZER) in the historical center. Filipe Anacoreta Correia admitted that that territory "must be increasingly confined to local traffic" and that, in the case of Baixa-Chiado, "this must be further reinforced and perceived".
In relation to restrictions forced by construction works and which were maintained after the works, we have a recent example from Porto. In Porto, the closure of the lower deck of the D. Luís I Bridge, which connects the Ribeira area to downtown Gaia, to car traffic, allowed the local authorities of Porto and Gaia to verify improvements in traffic and congestion in those parts of the cities and decide not to allow cars to return to that crossing. The promise was finally kept with the end of the works last week, and the opening the board only to public transportation, pedestrians and bicycles. Contrary to what the press reported, a bridge has now been full of people.
The plan presented by Moedas and Anacoreta ended up marking a part of the plenary session of the Municipal Assembly that also took place this Tuesday. The Vice-President and Alderman for Mobility said that the plan may also have positive consequences for pollution in that territory and specified that the different measures will be evaluated. "We will monitor, which means that what is good and works can stay and what is bad will be for rethinking. It is a dynamic plan. We are not imposing our idea on reality. We are testing in reality new ways that allow a better city. The historic part of the city shows signs of saturation and fragility, even in its Pombaline structure. So we have to test solutions.he assured.
Presented in 2020 by the then Mayor, Fernando Medina, the ZER ABC consisted of a new Reduced Emissions Zone to cover the entire Baixa area, Chiado and a part of Avenida da Liberdade. However, Medina ended up postponing the plan with the Covid-19 pandemic for a following mandate, which didn't materialize, and Moedas put it on the back burner, arguing not only that that territory should be thought of in the city as a whole, but also that restrictions should not be prohibitionist in nature, but should instead be gradual and based on individual freedom to change behavior. For his part, Miguel Coelho, Mayor of Santa Maria Maior, the main parish in the historic center covered by this ZER ABC, had revealed some discomfort with Medina's plan but argued that the intention to reduce by 40% the traffic in that area was meritorious.
Speaking now to Lisboa Para Pessoas, on the sidelines of the Municipal Assembly, Miguel Coelho said that the mobility plan now presented by Moedas "recovers the ABC ZER idea of restricting through-traffic"but "solves that with local transit signage, which means everyone will want to be local transit". The doubt of the mayor of Santa Maria Maior is in relation to supervision and if the City Council will have "ability" to do so in order to comply with the circulation scheme. "This looks like a poster plan, to make use of President Marcelo's expression"he commented. "But I'm here to wait and to see. We'll see if it's a poster plan or not."
Miguel Coelho says there is "little courage to take measures that will really solve the [downtown traffic] problem and that will upset some sectors". Referring that he has not yet had access to the plan in detail to know details at the level of streets and signage, the President of the Junta de Santa Maria Maior showed concern about the measure of loading and unloading, which, despite considering "positive"It may disturb the residents' rest at night. Coelho hopes that most of the restrictions will be maintained in the future and that they can be deepened, and about Rua da Prata he says: "I hope it will remain closed after the construction work"as, in fact, was defined in the ZER ABC project.
Pedro Costa, President of the Parish Council of Campo de Ourique, showed concern at the Municipal Assembly with the invitation to use the 5th Circular, highlighting that at Avenida Álvares Cabral, which is located in your parish, "there are unsignalized crosswalks, unlike all the crosswalks on Alexandre Herculano and Infante Santo". And one of those crosswalks, you mentioned, is "next to two schools"which may trigger a "road safety problem". "We are also talking about a street where we can see the reduction of channel space in relation to both Alexandre Herculano and Infante Santo. We have six access roads that then reduce to four. There is a bottleneck"he reported. Costa also pointed out that Álvares Cabral "is known on the Carris map as a circulation black spot"being "a seven of the worst sections of the city in the speed of bus circulation"A BUS lane has never been implemented due to the heavy car traffic that the two schools cause during rush hours. "No matter how many cars you can put on Álvares Cabral with this plan, those cars take up more space and carry fewer people than buses."
Anacoreta Correia replied, reinforcing that "these plans give a direction" but that "it is essential that they be monitored"being "fundamental the work of the Council Presidents". And he showed willingness to resolve the situations pointed out by Pedro Costa.
O LPP / Lisbon For People is a local newspaper dedicated to the Lisbon metropolitan area, published completely independently and on a non-profit basis. With a paper edition and an online edition, it talks mainly about mobility, housing, sustainability and citizenship.
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