Rua do Arsenal reopened to road traffic fully tarmacked. The initial project was to keep the granite cubes and parallels with a new base.
Road traffic on Rua do Arsenal and the north top of Praça do Comércio has been completed and reopened after four months of sidewalk repair work. The original implementation project has undergone changes, after the LPP newsThe sidewalk of Rua do Arsenal was changed from cobblestones to asphalt. In Praça do Comércio, the cobblestone was maintained and replaced with a new, more resistant laying.
Rua do Arsenal and the northern top of Praça do Comércio had been requalified in 2016, along with Rua da AlfândegaThis is part of a public space project signed by the architect Bruno Soares. With a floor composed of granite cubes and parallels, placed under a weak base of settlement, the streets in question have suffered over the years serious collapses, causing discomfort to the passengers of the buses that circulate there and also damaging the vehicles themselves.
The sidewalk of Rua da Alfândega, adjacent to Rua do Arsenal, was rectified in 2021 in an urgent contract - in this street, the "cover" of granite cobblestone was maintained, but it was put in place. a new laying base consisting of a layer of microconcrete to regularize the existing platform, a layer of cement-treated large-grained crushed aggregate, a layer of bituminous macadam, a layer of dry cement mortar and washed river sand..
The same laying was planned for Rua do Arsenal, but the project was changed during the works and the whole street now has an asphalt surface. At the same time, the section of the street that already had tarmac - and which already has several imperfections - has not been corrected. At the north top of Praça do Comércio, the floor of cubes and parallels was maintained but with the new laying already mentioned; here too, the road sidewalk was not fully intervened, so parts with rebates remain.
Overall, the repair cost close to 500 thousand euros to the municipality's coffers and was carried out by the company Protecnil. The repair of Rua da Alfândega had cost in 2021, around 220 thousand euros. All told, the correction of a poor settlement problem has cost the city of Lisbon close to 720 thousand euros. The requalification of these streets in 2016 had been framed in broader public space packages: Rua do Arsenal was included in the package of 3.2 million of the requalification of Cais do Sodré, and Rua da Alfândega was part of the renovation of 8.8 million Campo das Cebolas.
The streets of Arsenal and Alfândega, as well as Praça do Comércio, have a high bus traffic. Through that BUS corridor, 10 Carris bus routes, three Rede Noturna bus routes and streetcar 15 pass. On completion of the contract, these services have returned to that area, no longer circulating through Ribeira das Naus.
It now remains to be seen how the sidewalks of the repaired streets evolve over time, but it is expected that at least the new tarmac solution on Rua do Arsenal will be more resilient. In March, Gonçalo Matos, representative of the residents' association Vizinhos Em Lisboa, defended to the LPP the tarring of that entire axis to the detriment of the cobbled option. "Everything was designed for aesthetics, but not for the inherent overload of an important exclusive axis for BUS", commented on the original project by architect Bruno Soares. "When you look at the construction details of the street in the initial design of the contract, you realize that the laying base, on top of which the cobblestones were laid, has materials that can be knocked down."Gonçalo explained at the time. "The road surface in Rua da Alfândega had collapsed to such an extent that buses could no longer pass. So a direct contract was made under the State of Necessity."
