Works will affect Avenida da República in Gaia from Saturday
Traffic on Avenida da República, in Vila Nova de Gaia, in the district of Porto, will be conditioned from Saturday due to the implementation of two bike paths between Santo Ovídio and Jardim do Morro, the local authority reported today.
© iStock
País Gaia
In a post on its official 'site', the Gaia City Council explains that traffic on that avenue will be conditioned by zones, and that the intervention will start at Santo Ovídio.
Read Also: Porto. Supreme Court denies compensation to businessman harmed by Metro works (Portuguese version)
The works in question are pavement improvement works and the implementation of two cycle paths, one in each direction, from Santo Ovídio to Jardim do Morro.
In the note, the local authority led by socialist Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues safeguards that "this work is being done in close collaboration with the parish councils of Mafamude and Vilar do Paraíso and Santa Marinha and São Pedro da Afurada".
On Thursday, in statements to the Lusa agency, Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues said that the cycle path will occupy "part of the carriageway in what is already a bottleneck today, which is not due to the existence of a cycle path, but to the existence of illegal parking, which will obviously cease to exist".
"The cycle path, in addition to the delimitation it will have in terms of paint and signage, will also have a delimitation with bollards, with fixed blocks that will be placed to segregate the cycle path from motor vehicles (...). We have no vocation to go around fining illegal parking every day", said the mayor, adding that the installation of the cycle path will mean that, at some points on the avenue, a lane will be taken away from cars.
However, the mayor said that citizens "will not feel this very much, because it [the lane] was already occupied by illegal parking" and he safeguarded that the cycle path project took into account the existence of "clinics, garages, the City Council, bus stops", something that was "duly studied".
One of the places where the local authority identified illegal parking as a target is the Jardim do Morro area, having installed, in recent days, temporary physical barriers that prevent the accumulation of cars next to the metro station there.
"Since April, there has been a peak, an increase in people, both locals and tourists, in the whole area of Jardim do Morro and Ponte Luís I, and what we did was to adopt a set of preventive measures to control parking", he told Lusa.
Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues added that this is "also a security measure, because this traffic already exists, but as there is no segregation, there are scooters circulating on the sidewalks, bicycles in the middle of cars and overtaking cars in ways that are sometimes very risky".
"From the point of view of security and organisation of the city, we believe that it will be a good measure", he summarised.
Descarregue a nossa App gratuita.
Oitavo ano consecutivo Escolha do Consumidor para Imprensa Online e eleito o produto do ano 2024.
* Estudo da e Netsonda, nov. e dez. 2023 produtodoano- pt.com