The Algarve’s anti-tolls group CUVI wants to meet with the Prime Minister and President in a last-ditch attempt to scrap the A22 motorway tolls before this summer.
“The Algarve cannot experience another August with an average of 50 road accidents per day,” the group said in a statement.
The plan is simple. It involves gathering regional entities, politicians and businesses that oppose the tolls into a room with António Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
Other planned actions include carrying out studies into the tolls’ “dubious PPP contract” and the “negative consequences” they have had since they were imposed in 2011; creating a “regional manifesto” opposing the levies and holding protests when the PM and other government officials visit the Algarve this summer.
CUVI will also carry out a new go-slow protest on the EN125 between Loulé and Lagoa on Monday, April 17.
As the group explains, the tolls have had “devastating effects” on the region.
Road accidents continue to increase on the overburdened EN125, which CUVI stresses is “no alternative to the tolled motorway”.
“Most of the accidents would never occur if the Algarve was a toll-free region,” CUVI adds.
The EN125’s latest road accident victim was 36-year-old Francisco Nascimento, killed in a head-on crash between Lagoa and Portimão (click here).
CUVI adds that many businesses have either “gone bankrupt or suffered many hardships” due to the tolls and tourism has “lost competitiveness” compared to Spain’s Andalusia.
“In light of all this, what is the government waiting for to act and end this atrocity once and for all,” CUVI asks – adding that the PM himself admitted in his electoral campaign that the EN125 was a “cemetery” and that he had plans to make the A22 toll-free.
