The new road over the bridge to Faro Island should be completed next week, according to the much relieved Faro mayor Rogério Bacalhau.
The mayor said in an interview with Postal, that "according to the contract, today and tomorrow they will place the second half of the pipes to the north of the bridge and between Thursday and Friday the ones to the south."
"Next week the road surface will be laid, then the road markings and finally any road signs that may be required."
The president of Polis Litoral Ria Formosa, Sebastião Teixeira, whose contract this is, originally stated that the work would be completed before the summer swimming season which, as it started last week, he may now list among one of his many failures.
One of the costs of Teixeira’s inability to complete a job on time is the €300 a day that Faro ratepayers now are stumping up for policing the continuing roadworks.
Faro council is paying the GNR this daily amount to ensure the ‘smooth flow of traffic’ trying to access Faro Island.
Bacalhau has tried to get the contract hurried along, especially at times when there were no workmen at all on site, and is not best pleased at the mounting bill.
"Polis Litoral Ria Formosa, had no budget to pay the police further than this past weekend," said the mayor, rather weakly as Polis is cash rich and simply chose not to fund the cost.
The new car-park is far from ready. The 850 car site on the mainland near western the end of airport runway and some 750 metres from the bridge is designed for those wishing to use Faro island’s beaches which, by the time families have walked to the bridge and then across the island to the beach, involves at least a 1 kilometre walk in the summer sun.
Many families with youngsters and elderly will not wish to make the journey and may choose instead to spend time at beaches with car-parking closer by.
When all this work is completed, there will be a new road surface over the existing single lane bridge and a walkway/cycle path along a new wooden structure from the car-park to the island.
The traffic flow across the bridge will be controlled by traffic lights as before - and as before this will be where the blockages occur at peak times with vehicles unable to exit the single lane due to traffic build up ahead.
