LISBON’S ALCÂNTARA viaduct has reopened to traffic a month earlier than anticipated, following months of rush hour misery for motorists.
The viaduct had been closed since April because of repairs to the value of 1.5 million euros, following a report by the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil, the national civil engineering laboratory, which warned that the flyover was structurally dangerous.
Lisbon Câmara initiated the project by surfacing the road with anti-skid asphalt and replacing steel structural supports suffering from metal fatigue.
Câmara President, Pedro Santana Lopes, recently visited the site to see the work being completed. “We opted for a solution that was both aesthetic and practical,” he said, adding: “It’s very rare for public works to be finished ahead of schedule.” Santana Lopes confirmed that now the flyover is able to cope with traffic for at least another 30 years.
There had been a plan known as Alcântara XXI to replace the flyover with a roundabout, which would have involved moving the train line at that stretch, but this would have been more costly and taken longer to complete.
Santana Lopes also stressed the importance of its current policy of regenerating the entire docks area, which has long been an eyesore, by transferring the city’s commercial shipping activities to Setúbal and further west in Lisbon.
