"What causes confusion in transport systems is that the policy is to lower prices, not to guarantee mobility. With this price reduction, we are not guaranteeing anything, we are taking away access to people, we are congesting the systems", said university professor Álvaro Costa in Porto.

The president of the consultancy Trenmo was also speaking during the conference "Mobility: challenges and solutions for large cities", which took place today at the Almeida Garrett Municipal Library, organised by Rádio Renascença and Câmara do Porto.

The academic was referring to measures such as the Green Railway Pass, recently approved by the Government, or even the Tariff Reduction Support Program (PART), implemented in 2019.

Speaking specifically of a well-known case of the current Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, who was vice-president of the Cascais Chamber, in that municipality in the Lisbon district, public transport is free.

"But they can do this, because the city council, before doing this, increased production by 20% to 40%, left the buses with excess capacity, then lowered the price and guaranteed mobility for everyone", but "in the rest of the country is not like that".

According to Álvaro Costa, "the systems are congested, there are disruptions, people don't walk, and there is a central policy to lower prices".

"What we see in cars on the VCI [Via de Cintura Interna] we see in public transport in the Porto Metropolitan Area and a lot on even long-distance trains: it is not possible to enter the systems", he observed.

For the expert, "lowering the price" will only "aggravate the problem", speaking of a confusion between the "right to mobility" and "it being free", since the right must be in access to the system, which reduces the price can restrict.

For Paula Teles, president of the Institute of Cities and Towns with Mobility (ICVM), there may be "lower prices, which is important for families" or "greater supply", but "if public space does not allow the system to be competitive transportation, there's no way."

"It is important to think about space, accessibility and urban design", which may or may not enhance the use of alternative means, as this can increase the system's competitiveness.

Often, "an issue for modal change can be whether to have a sidewalk or not, to have a shelter or not, to have a queue to get on the bus or not", being the "key in intermodality".

"What I would like to say is that there are no transport and mobility solutions without rescuing space for the car. In other words, there is no point in creating BUS corridors if the same lanes for private vehicles continue next door", he asserted.

Carlos Oliveira Cruz, professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, noted that "economic accessibility is being improved without a significant improvement in physical accessibility", and now "there is no longer any social and political margin to increase the price" of transport again.

"I am in favor of improving economic accessibility (...), but this should have started first with strengthening physical accessibility: having more trains running, more buses", and then lowering the price to induce demand, he argued.

Carlos Oliveira Cruz observes that "lowering the price is by decree" and can happen "from one day to the next", while the increase in supply takes years to be implemented due to the necessary investments in rolling stock.

In the case of the road system, the creation of BUS lanes would “increase the speed of bus circulation and thus improve efficiency”.

"This involves making a choice, which is to take space out of the car. And that is a choice", he highlighted.