The Via do Infante Users Committee again has met to look at the damage that the tolls system on the A22 motorway already has caused and to schedule new actions to get them scrapped.
For the Committee, in addition to the damage to the regional economy, the tolls indirectly are causing an increasing number of accidents and deaths on the EN125 ‘alternative’ road which is not even close to being upgraded, as promised when the tolls were imposed in 2011.
According to figures provided by the National Road Safety Authority, there were 10,241 road accidents in the Algarve in 2016.
Last year, there were 751 more road accidents across the Algarve than in 2015 and 1,903 more than in 2014, with 31 fatalities and 158 serious injuries.
The Committee says that the vast majority of accidents are on the overcrowded EN125 which has taken around 50% of the traffic that travelled on motorway when it was free to use.
The Commission claims, as do an increasing number of politicians, that the concession contract "is another scandal and that this government has not yet had the courage to end it."
In the first 9 months of 2016, the net charge to the public purse for this PPP contract was €20.513 million, according to the report of the Technical Unit for Project Monitoring, and it is a key objective of Commission to have this contract made public and the secret clauses published and analysed.
The Committee says of course it is pleased that the ‘abolition of tolls on the Via do Infante’ is again going to be debated in parliament due to a petition lodged by the Left Bloc and the Communist Party, and hopes that “this time the MPs, the Socialist Party and even the PSD/CDS, in view of the worsening tragedy, will enable the permanent elimination of tolls in the Algarve."
The next action by the Committee is to request a hearing with the President of the Republic.
A broad delegation composed of CUVI members, businessmen, mayors and other Algarve associations want the Prime Minister, António Costa, to open an independent inquiry into the "doubtful" PPP Via do Infante concession contract. The Committee also wants a study to be set up by an independent body on the consequences and economic impact of the tolls.
Its members remain committed to demonstrating whenever the prime minister or other members of the government travel to the Algarve region and are organising another ‘go slow’ protest on April 17, between the Quatro Estradas and Lagoa.
The economic damage can be assessed fairly easily by an independent body but until MPs are allowed to see the contents of the secret funding agreement between the government and the concession holder, a cost benefit analysis will be meaningless as one of the key elements will be missing - the cost of scrapping the deal.
How the Court of Auditors allowed a contract to be signed with much of its contents never to be revealed, remains one of life’s great mysteries.
