The Municipal Assembly of Lagos has voted by a large majority to demand the abolition of tolls on the Via do Infante.
The proposal still had one councillor voting in favour of the tolls, and one abstention, but the remaining 23 voted to demand the scrapping of the toll system.
The motion argued that the damage caused by tolls on the Via do Infante is a lot higher than the cost of maintaining a toll-free motorway.
The use of EN125 as an alternative, in 2015 has seen 7,943 accidents, 138 serious injuries and the loss of 32 lives, 27 more than in the previous two years.
This council position comes shortly after the new Socialist government has come to power and the hope is that the problem will be reviewed at a time when the tolls scheme has been in operation for four years and the damage to the local economy has never objectively been assessed.
When the tolls were introduced by the Passos Coelho government, local councils were duped by a promise of over €200 million to renew and develop the EN125 to make it a ‘suitable alternative’ – a legal precondition for the tolling of the Algarve’s arterial route.
The tolls were imposed and the EN125 development money vanished, leaving anti-tolls group CUVI campaigning single-handedly for the abolition of the scheme.
The Algarve’s councils have remained largely silent whenever asked to reflect local opinion that the tolls were an expensive mistake.
The agreed minimum payment to the toll concession holder has resulted in upwards of €40 million a year handed over to a company ultimately owned by a Spanish infrastructure giant.
These payments have been due to a clause in the concession contract that agreed to subsidise the holder should traffic volume drop after the tolls were introduced. A decrease in volume was a certainty but the clause stayed in and the deal was signed off to the cheery delight of the concessionaire.
This inevitability has cost the general taxpayer dearly with the previous government resolutely refusing to enter into any public discussion, sticking to its mantra of ‘user pays.’
In the case of the Via do Infante, the user pays and the taxpayer then pays again due to one of the most suspicious contracts ever signed during the Passos Coelho administration.
