Oeiras wants to have less cars and more people at the "Algés Gates

Algés gates. It is with this "brand" that the Oeiras Council launches itself into an ambitious challenge of rethinking one of the entrances to the county and, in particular, one avenue - the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntáriosbetween Miraflores and Algés. The local authority wants to revitalize this axis, currently dominated by cars, by integrating the future LIOS light rail system and also a Metrobus line to Reboleira. At the same time, it wants to revitalize downtown Algés as a center for commerce, culture, and meetings, and solve once and for all the situation of the Algés creek, which is subterranean with an undersized infrastructure.

The "Algés Gateways" project has all of these objectives, seeking above all to establish a new centrality in the municipality of Oeiras and in the Lisbon metropolitan area. The ambition has already been worked on since the beginning of 2020, when the Oeiras Council invited specialists from different areas, from urbanism to sociologyto collect proposals and inputs for the requalification of the area. The pandemic has, however, delayed the plans and only now is the project being continued.

Thus, last Thursday, June 29th, at the end of the day, the municipality presented to the population the preliminary ideas it has, in order to collect new contributions, this time from the people who live in the Algés area on a daily basis. The session, which took place at the Palácio dos Anjos, was attended by the Mayor, Isaltino Morais. The population could intervene after the municipal technicians responsible for the project - Luís Serpa, Luís Batista Fernandes, Pedro Carrilho and Fátima Rabuge - presented a diagnosis of the area and some of the first proposals they have. The event was accompanied by an exhibition, allowing the population to read and take a closer look at some of the ideas. onlineThis allows not only remote access to the information displayed, but also the existence of an archive of everything that was said - an important transparency practice that, unfortunately, is not followed by all municipalities.

Reperfill the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários and create a new square in Algés

The need to reprofiling the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários, between Miraflores and Algés, giving it a more urban characterwas the starting point for the Oeiras Council to reflect on the entire surrounding area. The avenue in question is today a road axis where the automobile has a huge presence. Two lanes in each direction serve all drivers who want to use the CRIL, as well as several bus routes, including the 750 from Carris. There is spine parking along the avenue on both sides and also in the central corridor, plus several small pockets where we also find parked cars. There is tree planting but it is inconsistent and without a regular alignment, and the pedestrian paths are also inconsistent. There is no cycling infrastructure.

The Oeiras Chamber's preliminary proposal, shown at the public session, is to remove one traffic lane per direction from the avenue, replacing it with a two-way public transport corridor that can serve both LIOS and the BRT line planned to connect Algés to Reboleiraas well as all the other bus routes that cross the area. In the lane left for road traffic, the proposal is to limit the speed to 30 km/h in order to allow for the coexistence of car traffic and bicycles, establishing a continuous cycling axis between the Miraflores Urban Park (where there is already a bike lane) and Algés and the Algés transport interface, the Tagus River and Lisbon.

Parking spaces on the avenue's central corridor disappearIn practice, it is foreseen that in the future there will be a significant reduction in surface parking supplyThe municipality is planning underground or overhead alternatives. The municipal technicians also propose to reinforce the avenue's trees, providing a uniform and continuous alignment, as well as increasing and regularizing the pedestrian area, with new street furniture and better lighting.

To give this more urban and "boulevard" dynamic to the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntáriosthe Oeiras Chamber says needs to solve two exit nodes of the CRILThis will remove many of the cars that currently circulate along the aforementioned avenue - crossing traffic, drivers that would use the CRIL if it had the missing accesses. With fewer cars passing along the avenue, the municipality hopes to reduce noise and pollution near the very dense mesh of housing developments that exist around that axis.

In the area near the bus terminal and train station, the Oeiras Council intends to extend the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários, which currently ends just before the Algés Market, to the waterfront, with the corridor dedicated to the LIOS and BRT. In this section, the avenue moves away from the buildings and goes under the CRIL viaduct, leaving a "belly" next to the Market. In the drawing shared at the session, one can see a parking lot - it is a parking lot that exists today and, according to the municipality, is temporary - but the idea is to have here, at least, a wide square that connects with the Market. What this square might have is not known. There was talk of an open-air amphitheater, a garden, and also a modern library, which, more than a reading space, could be a cultural and social aggregator. In short, the square could have all of these things, too.

There is one point that seems to be more consensual: removing cars from in front of the Algés Market in favor of pedestrian mobility and also cycling. There could, however, be a local access for loading and unloading and emergency vehicles, as shown in the drawing, but the "belly" that the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários can form in this area is precisely to keep heavier traffic away from the commercial center.

To allow the revitalization of the entire area now known as "Portas de Algés", the Oeiras Council proceeded to acquire land and buildings, made nine relocations and carried out some demolitions, in a total investment of 2.6 million euros. And while the project is not moving forward on the ground, it built a second temporary parking lot next to the Market. The intention of the municipality is to maintain the public parking offer in this area, but in a raised or buried structureThis future park will replace the provisional ones now created, in order to serve not only the population of Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários (an area of high-rise buildings without garages), but also the transport and trade interface of downtown Algés. In this area, where stores and restaurants proliferate, the municipality has already done some work in terms of urban space requalification, but wants to go further and pedestrianize more streets (as is now the Rua Major Afonso Palla).

Solving the Algés creek

The Oeiras Chamber says it cannot intervene in the Algés Firemen Avenue and the "Portas de Algés" without solving the Algés creek issue. This watercourse is piped, i.e. hidden under the ground, from the initial part of the avenue to its mouth in the Tagus River. The underground sewer through which the river flows is undersized, except in the area of the CRIL, where the infrastructure was enlarged when the viaduct was built in 2002. The fact that the creek channel is too small in the almost 700 meters before and the 350 meters after this section - but mainly before - means that when there is heavy rainfall and a consequently higher flow, it is overloaded, leading to overflows and floods. This is what happened during the storms last December.

The local authority says it is aware of the problem but complains that the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente (APA) is unwilling to solve it, i.e., to increase the capacity of the collectors that carry the river to the river. At the northern top of Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários there is an area where it is possible to appreciate the Algés stream in the open; the City Hall has done a regularization work of the margins here, in an investment of 520 thousand Euros, having opened, in 2022, a small green space next to the stream - it is called the Quintelão and offers spaces for resting and urban gardens; it will integrate the future Urban Park of Algés, a project with no stabilized intervention area yet.

Whether the Ribeira de Algés will have other parts renaturalized - that is, brought to the surface of the urban space - is not yet known, but there is at least one idea of doing it between the train line and the Tagus River, where the course flows.

Public Participation

The Câmara de Oeiras has available the e-mail address [email protected] for interested people to send their contributions about the Algés Gateways project. "We want to hear positive input that can influence City Council decisions"Isaltino Morais said during the session that took place last week - a challenge that may be extended to the participation now by e-mail. "The City Council guarantees that it hasn't made any decision yet. We will listen to the people. Don't tell me is that nothing can be done there, because something has to be done."

The Algés Gates are being considered in a broader urban context, which should be mentioned. The Monsanto Forest Park is right next door, and it can be extended through a green corridor along the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários or in its proximity to the river (this was mentioned in the public session). The proximity to the Champalimound Foundation, the monumental area of Belém, the existence of urban parks in the vicinity and the planning of others, the entire sports and leisure area of Jamor, and all the investment planned in the scope of the Ocean Campus (which includes the so-called Algés Promenade, stage of several events) are other assets for the project now under discussion.

The project does not enter the waterfront, but the Oeiras Council wants to requalify the bus terminal and also, with the Port of Lisbon, find solutions for the Maritime Walk. The municipality also revealed its ambition in relation to the train station. During the session, they talked precisely about the untapped potential of the transport interface in that area, but also about the option taken to create temporary parking lots instead of temporarily extending the Avenida dos Bombeiros Voluntários towards the river, about the importance of having more cultural offerings in the area, such as cinema sessions, about being able to create "superblocks" in downtown Algés, to be placed a segregated bike lane on the avenue instead of 30+bicycle markings, the relationship of Algés with the Tagus River and about creating a sculpture or an iconic building that marks the Algés Gateways as such.

"I must tell you that the very idea of the Algés Gates was a completely spontaneous idea. At the time when the machine was demolishing those buildings I made a recording for a City Hall video and the old Algés Gates occurred to me at the time."commented Isaltino Morais at the event of the project's public presentation. "The Benfica Gates still have a symbol there. But here everything is gone. There used to be a bridge on the Algés river, a little below the old bullring [a place right in front of the current Algés Market, where today there is one of the two temporary parking lots], and until the 19th century a kind of tithe was charged for the products that went to be sold in Campo das Cebolas, in Lisbon.said the mayor.