The government has announced that a reduction in tolls on the A22 is to go ahead, but is a bit vague about the date.
Minister of Infrastructure, Pedro Marques, said to Parliament that he wants to move forward with the reduction of tolls on the former SCUT roads in the interior of Portugal and on those where there is no suitable alternative road, such as the Algarve’s Via do Infante.
By claiming there is ‘no suitable alternative’ to the A22 the minister has de facto agreed that the tolls on the A22 are illegally imposed but anyway wants to see them reduced ‘this summer’ unless something gets in the way...
Marques assured parliament that the preparatory technical work necessary to procede with the reduction is being done, but criticised the previous government for having done precisely nothing in preparation for a toll reduction despite Pedro Passos Coelho’s pre-election assurance that tolls would be reduced asap should he be re-elected.
This minister then tried to play the PPP card, blaming any possible delays in toll reduction on renegotiation of these disastrously expensive funding contracts.
Marques says he is miles away from the goal of cutting €7 billion from the PPP road contract costs, a random target set up by the last government which it missed by a country mile, the reductions achieved in fact being down to transferring the open-ended liability for road maintenance costs from the concession holder to the taxpayer.
The Users Committee of the Via do Infante (CUVI) is going ahead with its Boliqueime honkathon on Saturday as scheduled, a week before the parliamentary debate on May 6th which will pitch the Socialist Party against much of its left wing support structure.
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