Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho today displayed in full his cynical political tactics while fully expecting his audience to believe his every word concerning tolls on the Algarve's Via do Infante motorway and on teh Alentejo's SCUT network.
Visiting Guarda on a pre-election roadshow, the PM said that he had not lowered motorway toll rates in the Algarve and in the Alentejo because people would think this was just an election ploy.
Instead, the PM has promised toll reductions if people vote him back into power. Meanwhile, the increasing number of road deaths on the EN125 'alternative' road is causing untold misery and pain for those families affected.
Agog at his definition of ‘positive discrimination’ the audience at the wiring and cable company Coficab in Guarda heard the PM state cheerily that as for toll reductions, “we are able to do this very quickly," and that “there are already conditions to reduce the cost of tolls, after the renegotiation of PPP contracts.”
Passso Coelho yet again acknowledged that there needs to be "positive discrimination" in the Alentejo and in the Algarve, in the latter case "for specific reasons," upon which he did not elaborate.
In July this year Pedro Passos Coelho said he would “reduce toll rates on former free to use SCUT roads, particularly on the Via do Infante,” but only after the October election. This is despite an ever-increase in traffic volume on the EN125 leading to a higher death rate.
The general secretary of Socialist party, António Costa, is on record as saying that he will review the tolls system on the Via do Infante if he became prime minister and that it was ‘absurd’ to consider the EN125 as a suitable alternative to the motorway.
Costa’s local socialist candidate in Faro said toll rates on the Via do Infante should be slashed by 50% based on a technical study conducted by a group of economists and professors of the University Algarve. This will attract drivers back to the motorway and relieve volume on the tortuous EN125.
CUVI, the Algarve’s anti-tolls action group said, "what really matters is not a reduction in toll fees, as claimed by the PS, PSD and CDS, but the abolition of the tolls due to the tragedy that they are causing across the region."
CUVI claim that even after completion of the redevelopment of the EN125, this parochial road will never be an alternative to the Via do Infante motorway.
According to the latest official figures, road accidents and related deaths in the Algarve are far in excess of those of last year with 30 deaths already in 2015 compared to 19 over the same period last year and 14 for the whole of the year before.
Passos Coelho has the 'conditions' to remove the tolls, he has the facts and figures showing this will save lives, yet plays politics with the tolls scheme while the EN125 road traffic accident death rate climbs unnecessarily.
