Lisbon, July 31, 2024 (Lusa) - Lisbon City Council announced on Wednesday that it intends to limit the number of parking spaces for tuk-tuks and the number of licences to be granted to this type of vehicle to regulate the activity in the city.
Lisbon City Council, chaired by Social Democrat Carlos Moedas, announced its intentions today in a statement after a meeting with various organisations, including the National Association of Tourist Entertainment Drivers (ANCAT), the Municipal Police, EMEL—Empresa de Mobilidade e Estacionamento de Lisboa, and the PSP.
According to the municipality, this first meeting ‘identified the most serious situations in the city and presented proposals for better management and organisation of urban space’.
‘Lisbon City Council will identify areas with zero tolerance regarding car parking. Strict compliance with the law will be policed concerning the legal limits for this parking, without exception,’ according to the note.
The municipality says it intends to ‘halve (500) the number of vehicles authorised to park in the city's public spaces’ and create 250 authorised parking spaces for licensed ‘tuk-tuks’.
The municipality says the figures currently indicate that around 1,000 ‘tuk-tuk’ vehicles operate in the city of Lisbon, emphasising that for this reason, “it is essential to look for solutions to impose order and some discipline.”
To this end, Lisbon City Council intends to implement a ‘zero tolerance’ enforcement plan in areas with the highest tourist influx.
According to Lisbon City Hall, operators will be required to be licensed by the local authority ‘so that they can park their vehicles in the designated areas’, and training for tuk-tuk operators will also be a requirement.
‘We're also going to have to assume zero tolerance for some of the areas that have been heavily penalised by the unregulated presence of this type of vehicle. It's also essential that the municipality has the means to control the scale of the operation in the city and, specifically, the maximum number of tuk-tuks that the city can support for circulation,’ said the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, quoted in the note.
For its part, ANCAT expressed its satisfaction with the meeting, considering that it ‘corresponded to the association's objectives’.
‘It was a very productive meeting and a good start to the conversation. We are the main stakeholders in regulation,’ emphasised ANCAT's secretary general, Inês Henriques, in statements to the Lusa news agency.
According to the ANCAT official, tour operators will benefit from the measures proposed by the city council since ‘it will increase the number of parking spaces available for these vehicles’.
‘Officially the number of parking spaces for tourist animation vehicles is 116, but due to certain constraints we only have 86. Now the council is proposing to create 250 spaces,’ she said.
Inês Henriques said that in the coming weeks, more meetings will take place with the different organisations so that ‘together’ a regulation for the activity can be developed.
‘ANCAT is grateful and is committed to being a partner in dialogue with the local authority, parish councils and all the political groups represented in the Lisbon Municipal Assembly because we want to be part of the solution and not part of the problems,’ she added.
FAC/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
