Porto, Sept. 3, 2024 (Lusa) - The Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, suggested to the minister of infrastructure, Miguel Pinto Luz, on Tuesday that the number of ride-hailing services in cities be limited at any given time to avoid excessive traffic, he told journalists.

‘Let's imagine that Porto has the capacity to operate 2,000 ride-hailing services within its territory. We can even divide Porto into sectors. As soon as there are more cars than that number, the platform stops working for the others,’ Rui Moreira explained to journalists.

Miguel Pinto Luz met with the mayors today at the Área Metopolitana do Porto (AMP) headquarters, discussing mobility issues in the sub-region, such as ride-hailing traffic in the city, traffic management on the Via de Cintura Interna (VCI), the Porto Metro, the Vouga Line and housing.

Regarding ride-hailing, Rui Moreira said that, in the case of Porto, there is knowledge about the number of taxis circulating (around 800), but not how many ride-hailing vehicles circulate in a city characterised by excessive traffic.

‘There's no way to contingent ride-hailing, which means that at certain times there's an excess of ride-hailing in the city,’ said the mayor, speaking of a “negative impact, on the one hand, for the city's mobility” and also for the ride-hailing operators themselves, “because the excess supply leads to extremely low prices”.

So, according to the proposed solution, for Rui Moreira ‘on the one hand it solves the problem of mobility, it allows us to know and map where the ride-hailing services are, not each ride-hailing service but to understand where they are, where the “swarm” is’, and for the operators it would also be ‘advantageous because they won't be dumping’.

Asked whether ride-hailing vehicles waiting for journeys could also create traffic, Rui Moreira stressed that ‘when they park, they have to behave like any private vehicle, at least in theory’.

JE/ADB // ADB.

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