The government explained this week that the cut is justified in that it will increase mobility and economic exchanges in disadvantaged areas in rural Portugal, but added that mainland Portugal’s second wealthiest region, the Algarve, will also benefit as it would be unfair to discriminate.
Preliminary analyses also indicate that by reducing tolls, more drivers would travel on these motorways and that the move could potentially come at very little cost to the taxpayer or actually prove profitable.
Pedro Marques, Minister for Planning and Infrastructure told Parliament on Tuesday that “we don’t have first and second class citizens, and as a result, toll reductions in the interior will only go ahead once the same can be enforced on all toll roads in question.”
The Minister further argued that “when there is a drop in toll fees, it has to be for all. If the [previous government] had not conducted a disastrous renegotiation with road management companies, then this reduction would have already been in place.”
Despite recent positions pointing to the contrary, Pedro Marques said that the A22 in the Algarve will also be covered by this policy as the EN125 road “is not an alternative, even with all the improvements currently being conducted.”
These comments by the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure remain somewhat contradictory to those he made earlier this year when he stated that while the Government was looking at matters to ease mobility, the issue of removing tolls was not up for discussion.
Despite the government’s position, a protest scheduled this Saturday (30 April) in the Algarve is still set to go ahead, with the Commission of Algarve Road Users (CUVI) arguing in favour of the complete abolition of tolls in the region.
The protest will be used as a precursor for a parliamentary debate on tolls set for Friday 6 May, which will be followed by a vote on whether or not to abolish tolls in the Algarve.
The Left Bloc, along with the Communist Party earlier this year presented a law decree proposal in which it called for the complete abolition of tolls on the Algarve’s A22.
In comments to The Portugal News at the time, João Vasconcelos, who will be leading the protest in Boliqueime this Saturday, and who is also an MP for the Left Bloc, reasoned that “abolishing tolls will come at a lower financial expense than maintaining them on the Algarve’s A22 motorway.
“The proposal we presented covers many areas, but it will essentially call for the total abolition of tolls on the A22”, the MP added.
Earlier this week, Vasconcelos used an address to Parliament to remind the current Prime Minister of comments he made during election campaigning last autumn.
Speaking during a debate on the government’s stability programme, Vasconcelos recollected that António Costa referred to the EN125 as “a massacre” and a “cemetery”, and said it was “time for promises to be kept and end tolls in the Algarve, a condition that depends solely on the Socialist Party government.”
Last September, then opposition leader António Costa told reporters that his party “had already stated that it is necessary to re-evaluate the contractual obligations the state has assumed”, adding that one of his party’s priorities was to go one step further and “eliminate” tolls and “create better access routes” in the Algarve and in the countryside.
The current prime minister afterwards said that although he was not supportive of anti-toll protests, and that he was “unenthusiastic about eliminating tolls”, some situations were in urgent need of an overhaul, such as the A22 Via do Infante, which runs the length of the Algarve.
The Left Bloc had earlier this year stated that the introduction of the tolls by the previous PSD/CDS-PP government on 8 December, 2011, “proved catastrophic for the region with the loss of competitiveness with neighbouring Andalusia and the resulting losses in the regional economy, business failures and worsening unemployment.
“The Algarve has become, by virtue of a deadly EN125, gripped in a ‘permanent state of war’ with tens of thousands of accidents (in 2015 there were almost 10,000 accidents), hundreds of serious injuries and some 130 fatalities (a large part of which took place on this ‘urban road’ that is not any kind of alternative to the Via do Infante)”.
Quoting figures from the National Road Safety Authority (ANSR), the Left Bloc recalled 27 accidents were registered on average per day in the region.
“How many more lives will be lost, how many more families will be torn apart by virtue of iniquitous laws applied without mercy, by the action of a government?”, the party queried, concluding “It is necessary to urgently repair and correct this merciless and deadly injustice - the EN125 is not a serious alternative to the Via do Infante.”