The PCP requires the Government to "assume its responsibilities towards the populations of the Algarve, intervening with the appropriate means and forms" so that the supply of public road transport in the Algarve is restored "in the immediate term", to levels prior to the pandemic.
In a statement, the PCP considers the current situation “unacceptable”, as “across the region there are dozens of careers that have been suppressed and have not yet been restored. There are places that are without any kind of public transport, aggravating their isolation. There are workers who are no longer able to travel to their place of work due to lack of public transport».
In addition, accuses the PCP, "the private operator, which has benefited over the past few months from public support such as the simplified layoff, is developing a blackmail operation, demanding more money from the municipalities to replace the offer prior to the epidemic."
For the communists, "the epidemic cannot serve as an excuse to degrade a service that already left much to be desired."
The PCP says that the Algarve has been confronted “for many years with an insufficient supply of public transport that condemns the overwhelming majority of the population to the use of individual transport with high economic costs and environmental impacts. For populations with greater financial difficulties, residing in rural areas or outside major cities, the situation is even more dramatic, with thousands of people in the Algarve banned from exercising their right to mobility».
This reality results, according to the PCP, “in addition to the lack of investment in public transport, of which the situation on the Algarve railway line is an example, of the policy of successive governments that dismantled the Rodoviária Nacional and handed over the transport monopoly to private economic groups. passenger road which, in the Algarve, is dominated by the Barraqueiro Group, holder of the EVA – Transportes».
The communists also defend that, in an act of de-responsibility for «a policy to promote cohesion throughout the national territory, the PS Government, with the support of the PSD, also transferred the responsibility for the management of public transport to the municipalities. The competence was transferred to the municipalities, and these to AMAL, however, neither the municipalities nor AMAL have their own means to ensure the response that the populations need».
“All these problems, which already existed before the pandemic”, continues the PCP, “were profoundly aggravated in the last year. Whether because of the measures that restricted economic and other activities that led to a large drop in demand and income, or because of the sanitary measures that forced a reduction in vehicle capacity and an increase in expenses, the fact is that the situation has deteriorated a lot and, according to AMAL itself, it will not be so soon that the levels of offer by the EVA before the pandemic will be resumed».
For all of this, the PCP wants the Government to intervene to replace the bus routes that were suppressed, "a short-term need that does not, however, dispense with another more global consideration, in the sense of a vigorous investment in public transport in the region – whether by road or by rail – ensuring lower prices, intermodality and an effective response to the mobility needs of populations'.
This is an «urgent and necessary investment that the Algarve has been demanding for a long time and for which the PCP will continue to fight», concludes the note.
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