Government commits to the Porto Metropolitan Area as “the great hub of the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula”

The Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, stated that the Government’s commitment is to reinforce the competitiveness of the Porto Metropolitan Area (AMP), stating it as “the great hub of the Northwest of the Peninsula Ibérica”.

During the ceremony announcing an allocation of 96 million euros for the completion of works on the Pink Line (São Bento – Casa da Música) of the Porto Metro, which took place this Friday at the station São Bento metro station, in Porto, Miguel Pinto Luz stated his aim to make AMP “the great hub of the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula”.

“This is our focus, this is our objective, and we will not deviate from this objective”, guaranteed the government official, rejecting a vision of public policies in mobility, transport and the environment as “watertight compartments”.

“We cannot think about mobility or transport without thinking about intermodality, about the modal transfer that is necessary and mandatory”, he considered, remembering that Portugal has “a percentage of close to 40% of emissions emitted by the transport sector “.

For the minister, “everything that has to do with urban mobility has to be thought of at the same time with heavy mobility”, remembering that the executive has already reaffirmed “the commitment to High Speed, namely Lisbon – Porto and Porto – Vigo”.

“We are committed to this intermodal vision in terms of investments in Leixões”, whose port already serves a ‘hinterland’ “of almost 14 million fellow citizens”, also remembering the increase in capacity planned for Francisco airport Sá Carneiro.

Miguel Pinto Luz assumed a “vision of intermodality”, intending to give AMP “the competitiveness and positioning in the Iberian Peninsula that it owes”.

The Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, stated that “the focus on public transport that is environmentally sustainable and capable of offering quality options to our fellow citizens is an important factor of cohesion the social and territorial”.

“Transport represents approximately 29% of CO2 emissions [dióxido de carbono] in the European Union, but in our country they represent 37%. We are a country with good indicators from the point of view of the green transition, but the transport sector is an exception”, he highlighted.

Therefore, he considered that “efforts need to be redoubled” and “a lot of work needs to be done in the area of ​​transport”.

“If we want, at the same time, to preserve and improve the mobility of our citizens, we must increasingly invest in sustainable alternatives to individual transport”, he stressed.

The minister also left a warning, speaking of “financial resources that may not be repeated in the future”, demanding “that there also be, on the part of all entities, a strong commitment to executing the projects.”

“The challenge of combating climate change, of transitioning to a sustainable economy, requires a different pace than what we have become accustomed to in the past. A different pace and a demanding rigor. No We can allow ourselves to waste opportunities under penalty of seeing the development train passing by”, he warned.