Faro Island traffic at a standstill due to bureaucratic incompetence

If the incompetence of the Polis Litoral Ria Formosa company needed any further coverage, here it is, with the traffic chaos caused at Faro Island a direct result of the slack management at this well-funded but deeply incompetent, State-owned company.

The installation of an electronic traffic management panel earlier this year, at the roundabout before the straight road leading to the single lane bridge to Faro Island, was meant to advise drivers of the availability of parking spaces on the island.

Should the island’s car parking areas be full, drivers could use the new car parking area 800m short of the bridge and walk the rest of the way - not ideal but sensible enough.

This was what the electronic panel was mean to achieve, but it has never been commissioned, leading to queues of up to an hour before traffic gets over the bridge - often for drivers to find that none of the 2,500 spaces are available.

The panel looks good but is totally useless, much like Polis.

The new bridge to the island has yet to be started despite this being an imperative already announced by Polis, so access to the island’s beaches is over the old, single lane bridge which needs GNR traffic police to monitor the ancient traffic light system, overriding it when necessary.

So deliberately behind on its work programme, Polis has not even started the tendering process for the new bridge that the youth of today may see completed on their reitrement.

Faro council is waiting for the hand-over of the car park and walkway work, and of the electronic traffic management system. The mayor of Faro, Rogério Bacalhau, said the council cannot operate the traffic system until it formally is handed over by Polis.

"The transfer of skills on the traffic management system and of the works carried out by Polis for Praia de Faro is dependent on an audit of the work, that the council is carrying out, to make sure that the work is complete," said the mayor.

Before accepting the work, Polis and the council have to sort out who will pay to replace the lights along the walkway leading to the bridge, most of which were stolen last December and not replaced.

“I cannot and should not accept work on behalf of the council without being sure that what has been done corresponds to the project specifications and that everything is in good working order," says the mayor.

The council has received a 'draft protocol' for the transfer of ownership of the works, but it will only sign the document when the work done is the same as the work on the specification. This is not the case along the walkway as the lights have been pinched and the traffic management system has never been switched on.

As for the traffic system, Rogério Bacalhau says he doesn’t know whether the software needed to operate the panel actually exists. If it does, the mayor does not know if it works, so he will not accept the work as completed until everything is running smoothly.

Until such time as this is sorted out, Polis is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the traffic management system which it clearly has no intention of doing, despite queues of traffic building up in scorching August temperatures.

The Polis Litoral Ria Formosa company should have been wound up in December 2015 but has been so slow in achieving its designated tasks that the Ministry of the Environment twice has extended its life, presumably in the hope that one day it will get something right.

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