Dear Editor,
Last week’s Algarve Resident informs us that the EN125 project is to begin to update the road network next month.
For the Cachoa valley (Lagos), the plans appear to be incomplete, misconceived and undesirable in every manner and should be urgently reviewed in their entirety by the National Authorities and Lagos Câmara, before work commences.
Apart from ensuring the environmental destruction of the valley, with reduced local access, these plans will be unnecessarily expensive and, with increased traffic flow, will fail to achieve their objectives.
The centre of these confusions will be upon the existing lopsided roundabout on the Lagos West M22 Link Road, before eventual egress on further roundabout on the EN125.
This present obstruction to the free flow of traffic on the Link Road is already dangerous enough with its steep, fast gradients from the North and South, variable cambers upon the roundabout with restricted vision due to its tilt.
Yet it is planned to link this flawed structure East and West with motorway specification type link roads. These roads, because of their specifications, are additional link access and egress roads for the M22, they are not dear old N125 additions as portrayed.
In this way, local motorists will be encouraged to take a short cut between Lagos and Quatro Estradas with a short dash along to this dangerous but now lethal roundabout.
In my experience, I have tried to recollect a more dangerous roundabout but I can’t remember one where two busy roads meet headlong along motorway style roads on the same roundabout.
I have little doubt that these dire warnings will go unheeded by the authorities, so intent are they upon forcing these misconceived plans though without complete legal and democratic processes, and where will they be and will they accept any responsibility when the bells finally begin to toll?
Michael Tushingham,
Lagos
Editor’s note: Dear Michael, thank you for letting us know about this particular road hazard. I would like to encourage other readers to do the same and perhaps accompany their ‘Letters to the Editor’ with a photograph of the area in question.
