Porto’s new management decided to suspend this week the second phase of Metrobus, after months of protest choir that, despite different shades, joined associative movements, citizens and the overwhelming majority of local municipal candidates.
We will better realize the genuine sensitivity of the new officials of the company after the electoral result of the 12th, when Rui Moreira’s successor is known in the Porto Authority, but it seems consensual that, launched as one of the bets to revolutionize mobility in the city of Porto, the current Metrobus project, with its many (76) million euros funded by PRR, became a symbol of how not building city.
Planned to connect the House of Music to Anémona, on the Porto/Matosinhos border, in buses, the project promised sustainable mobility, but a bureaucratic imposition that makes Moucas ears on popular will and disrespects the soul of a noble area of the city was revealed over time.
If the first phase of the project was no longer enough -which make no new bus a new bus between Casa da Música and Praça do Empire yet -the second phase, on Boavista Avenue to Foz, became the epicenter of a discord that found the stage in the municipal campaign and, thus, was able to mobilize attention that, outside this period of scrutiny, could again ignored.
Boavista, in its southern zone, is a kind of oasis of urban tranquility, with centenary trees, bike paths and a harmony that balances the pulse of the city. The center corridor foreseen for Metrobus threatens this essence, promoting the slaughter of trees in this corridor (although with compensation plans on side walks and other zones) and pushing the current bike path that is actually one of the best achieved channels of soft mobility in the city. The announced travel time gains provided by the Metrobus solution in a part of the avenue that does not face the urban pressure of other zones do not justify the ecological and aesthetic cost.
However, mobility must adapt to population habits, not impose disconnected solutions. Metrobus, however, advanced as a typical solution designed in gabines disconnected from reality, without genuine dialogue with whom the city lives, ignoring opinions of the municipal assembly and criticism of Rui Moreira himself, a mayor who, however, was approving the projects alleging the urgency of European deadlines.
In short, a screaming example of technocracy that should serve as a reminder to those who end up elected on the 12th: cities build with people, not against them.