Heavy goods vehicles will no longer pay tolls on the Circular Regional Exterior do Porto (CREP, A41 motorway), at rush hour, from March onwards, to begin freeing up VCI traffic in Porto.
“From March 1st, heavy transport will no longer pay tolls at CREP in two time periods: between 7:00 am and 10:00 am and between 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm”, announced this Monday, November 24th, the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, after a meeting with the mayors of the Porto Metropolitan Area, at the institution’s headquarters.
On the same occasion, the president of AMP and Porto City Council, Pedro Duarte, announced that this measure “will have to be complemented with measures, also, at the level of the VCI itself [Via de Cintura Interna]committing to propose them to the Government “by the end of this year”, with a decision to be made on March 1st.
Miguel Pinto Luz said that this is “a measure to encourage the increasing use of CREP to the detriment of VCI, which is (…) the biggest traffic problem” in the country, with “nothing even comparable to any other road in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area or in another area of the country”.
Clarifying that the measures refer exclusively to heavy goods, regarding the direct intervention solutions in the VCI that will be studied by the municipalities, he stated that “several solutions are on the table”, but I didn’t want to anticipate it.
“But they will necessarily prevent, or make it increasingly more difficult, the passage of these heavy vehicles on the VCI”, he stressed, pointing out that the amount that the State will have to reimburse the CREP/A41 concessionaire is around 10 million euros per year.
Pedro Duarte said that “there is the possibility of placing gantries whose toll is, in some way, a disincentive for crossing the city and the Metropolitan Area”.
“We have the possibility, eventually, at the times we are talking about [07h00 às 10h00 e 16h00 às 19h00] there is a ban on heavy goods for the purpose of crossing the metropolitan area”, said the mayor of Porto.