It was in early April that the Oeiras City Council presented its Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) and its Accessibility Plan. Documents are in public consultation until July.

Oeiras is planning and discussing the future of mobility in the county for the next 10 years. At the beginning of April the City Council presented the set of plans that is now - and until July 6th - under public discussion. We are talking about Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and the Accessibility Plan of the municipality, two plans that, in fact, are one because they were designed together and make sense together, tracing the path to an integrated mobility system in Oeiras.
The presentation of the plans was held on April 3rd in Carnaxide, in an event open to the population and broadcast online, attended by the Mayor, Isaltino Morais, and Joana Baptista, Councillor for Mobility. "The modal split is still dominated by individual transport, the car, 45%. But this no longer represents the majority, as 31% of people choose public transport and 20% commute on foot."Joana pointed out. "The plans presented today outline a picture of the path we wish to follow, foreseeing a series of interventions and a set of services that will lead to an effective improvement in the functioning of the transport and mobility system in Oeiras, with positive impacts on the daily lives of all those who live, study or work in our localities. This is only possible with an integrated vision of the mobility ecosystem, based on the articulation between the various means of transport."
Although Portugal does not have legislation for the preparation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), it does have guiding documents for their preparation. The objective of the UMP and the Accessibility Plan (AP) is to provide the Municipality of Oeiras with municipal documents that frame the strategy of planning and coherent action with the promotion of a more sustainable mobility, with lower costs and environmental impacts. The PMUS is a mobility management instrument that is constituted as a action plan for investments to be made by the municipality, while the PA will serve to structure accessibility and prioritize interventionsmaking them compatible with a vision of the future that is attentive to the major trends associated with this area.
With the PMUS and the PA, the Oeiras Council foresees, over the next 10 years, increasing to 36.4% the modal share of public transport, increasing to 24.9% the modal share of soft transport (walking and cycling), reduce to 43.0% the modal share of individual transportto reduce the number of pedestrian collisions by 30%, reduce the number of road accident victims by 30% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. To achieve these goals, the plans establish a mobility system that integrates the different modes, combining public transport with walking and cycling and with the car, and working at different levels: in main networks for large displacements, preferably in public transport; in secondary networks for intermediate displacements; and in local networks, where walking and cycling have more space, but there are still local buses and cars at reduced speeds.
Indicator | Current | 5-year goal | 10-year goal |
---|---|---|---|
Individual transport (car) | 45,5% | 42,0% | 43,0% |
Public Transportation | 31,2% | 34,1% | 36,4% |
Gentle mobility (walking, cycling) | 20,8% | 23,9% | 24,6% |
Road killings | -20% | -30% | |
GHG Reduction (ton of CO2 equivalent) | -8.5% | -20% |
The starting point for the elaboration of the PMUS and the PA was an analysis of the Oeiras territory, with the help of a population mobility survey conducted by the Way2Go consulting company. It was verified that 57.3% of the 245,100 daily trips made are internal to the municipality and that only 26.9% are for Lisbon. Most of the trips (45.5%) are made by car31.2% are on public transport and 20.8% are on foot or bicycle. It was also verified that about half of the urban centers and agglomerations of Oeiras have average travel times in public transport higher than those recorded in individual transport, and that public transport is particularly important in the parishes served by the Cascais Line.

In fact, the Cascais Line is to public transport what the Avenida Marginal is to individual transport (cars): they are two structural axes that serve the same population, those who live in or near the riverside area. There is, however, no public transportation structuring axis equivalent to the A5; and there is also a lack of other connections that internally connect the different housing and employment "cities" that have been established in recent decades throughout the municipality. In fact, Oeiras is a territory divided in four parts by the A5 and A9/CREL highways, with the hydrographic lines also contributing as barriers with little permeability.

The Oeiras Council understands that it is necessary to create new structuring roadways to connect the different "cities" in the county and also new accesses (nodes) to the already existing highwayssuch as the A5. For Oeiras, having this structuring road network resolved and without discontinuities is important for reduce congestion in urban areas, divert traffic and be able to give other functions to local streets and avenues that currently serve as crossings. This is the only way to free up, for example, Avenida Marginal for more urban and local functions, and less crossing. In the plans, the municipality of Isaltino Morais intends to create road corridors dedicated to public transportation, such as the reformulation of the SATUThe development of the Lagoas Park and Taguspark, the creation of the tramway network and the extension of the tramway network to Lagoas Park and Taguspark. LIOS and the requalification of the transport terminals of Algés, Paço de Arcos and Oeiras. Also included is the creation of neighborhood careers that connect populations to proximity services and a reinforcement in the supply of public transportation to business centers.

The municipality of Oeiras is committed to having reduced speed and coexistence zones to favor and give comfort to the pedestrian mode, mitigate hit-and-run black spots and establish continuity of the pedestrian paths on roads with significant road traffic. In relation to bicycles, it intends to develop structuring projects for a cycling network that connects different points in the municipalityincluding the extension of the Corporate Cycle Path to TagusPark and Caxias, the creation of a cycle path between Algés and Paço de Arcos and a section of Avenida Marginal, in Paço de Arcos. Included in the projects to be carried out is also the municipal network of shared bicycles, whose implementation will be phased, the regulation of loading and unloading in urban centersthe development of Pedestrian and bicycle trains to schoolsand the establishment of low emission zones that restrict entry to pre EURO3 vehicles (prior to 2001).


As far as parking is concerned, it is proposed to create new public parking lotswith a total of almost four thousand seats, and the progressive pricing of surface spaces to promote not only turnover, but also the migration of long-term parking to these lots. As for the electric vehicle charging network, it will be strengthened to about 200 public charging points.
In short, the intervention strategy foreseen for this plan includes promoting a better use of the public transport system and of soft modes, reducing the dependence on individual transport, improving the energy efficiency of transport systems and investing in urban mobility management measures. The PMUS and the PA were prepared by the consulting firm Figueira de Sousa with FUNDEC - Association for Training and Development in Civil Engineering and Architectureof the Instituto Superior Técnico. Fernando Nunes da Silva, former Lisbon City Councilman for Mobility, was involved in the project.
The PMUS and PA synthesis report, which you can see below, integrates the main aspects of the work developed by the teams for the sustainable urban mobility plan and the accessibility plan and, at the same time, includes the calculation of pollutant emissions associated with the transport sector in order to meet the targets set in PMAUS-AML and the Lisbon Region Operational Program. This report enables the disclosure of the Plans in a way that is accessible to everyone and is an essential part of the public consultation process, having been structured by the following approaches: context and starting situation; intervention strategy; intervention priorities; impact on pollutant emissions and energy consumption; and monitoring and evaluation system.
The concentration in a single report thus allows for a better understanding of the short term vision for the urban mobility system in the territory of the municipality of Oeiras, aimed at promoting a more sustainable mobility. You can consult all the PMUS and PA documents below, and learn more about the public consultation procedure - available until July 6th. on this page.