The Algarve’s appalling death rate as a result of road accidents has risen by 80% in the first seven months of the year compared to 2014.
Portugal’s National Road Safety Authority reports that road accident deaths across the region have gone from 15 to 25, another two can be added as a result of the head on collision last Sunday in Lagoa.
The number of collisions remains less than in Oporto and the capital but at around 5,500 the Algarve has an unenviable reputation for poor safety and poor driving.
According to the anti-toll campaign group CUVI, the blame can be laid fair and square on the toll system imposed on motorists using the Algarve’s formerly free Via do Infante motorway.
Motorway tolls have shifted thousands of vehicles per day onto the EN125 road which, the group claims, simply is not up to the volume or speed of traffic now crammed onto its roads which pass through villages interspersed with dual carriageways, few sections of which are in a good state of repair with maintenance a low priority through the recession years and the €250 million promised for EN125 improvements, cancelled as soon as the tolls were up and running.
CUVI has much support as business groups in the Algarve and of course motorists want a return to a free to use motorway to reduce the pressure on the EN125 and reduce the Algarve’s death rate from crashes.
Not all the road deaths have been on the Via do Infante as in June a Frota Azul coach left the motorway and plunged into a ravine, killing four Dutch tourists and injuring many more.
CUVI says that since the tolls were imposed on the Via do Infante, a road largely paid for by European money to increase social mobility and develop the regional economy, over 100 deaths have been recorded on the EN125.
The money does not add up either as on top of the toll income, the taxpayer has been subsidising the toll company up to €40 million per year as the government signed a deal with the concession holder that made up for any income lost due to lower traffic volume on the motorway after tolls were introduced.
For the government to buy its way out of the toll concession, several hundred million would need to be set aside, so the Algarve’s motorists continue to suffer delays and frustrations while the coalition does its best to avoid the subject.
Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, currently holidaying in the Algarve, has offered a reduction in the toll rates if he is voted back in this autumn but the way the tolls deal is structured, any reduction would mean that the taxpayer makes up for the lost income.
