There are more and more vehicles circulating on Madeira’s roads, but in practice, it is only possible to count on meters, which is precisely what the Regional Roads Directorate (DRE) does, whose accounts show a daily average of almost 40 thousand cars circulating daily in the first nine months of 2025, which represents an increase of almost 6% compared to the same period in 2024.
Thus, from January to September 2025, “road traffic count increased by 5.3% on the Via Rápida and 6.6% on the Vias Expresso, compared to the same period in 2024”, reports today the Regional Directorate of Statistics of Madeira (DREM) based on information provided by the DRE. According to the accounts, “on the concession roads, the aforementioned increases compared to the first nine months of 2024 were driven by light traffic (+5.4% on the Via Rápida; +6.5% on the Vias Expresso) and heavy traffic (+4.5% on the Via Rápida; +12.0 on the Vias Expresso)”.
However, calculating “the weighted average daily traffic”, from January to September 2025, there were, on average, 39.9 thousand vehicles on the Via Rápida and 8.0 thousand vehicles on the Vias Expresso, representing increases of 5.9% and 7.5%, in the same order”, informs DREM. And it adds: “The evolution of light vehicle traffic (+5.9% on the Via Rápida; +7.4% on the Vias Expresso) had a decisive impact on that variation. Due to the reduced expression of heavy vehicle traffic (respectively, 2.2% and 2.1% of the total), the variations compared to 2024 (+5.0% on the Via Rápida; +13.7% on the Vias Expresso) had little impact on the evolution of the indicator as a whole.”
Looking only at the 3rd quarter of 2025 (July to September), “it can be seen that the year-on-year variations in road traffic count were +5.8% on the Via Rápida and +7.7% on the Vias Expresso” and that in the same period “the weighted average daily traffic grew 5.9% on the Via Rápida and 8.4% on the Vias Expresso”, he highlights.
It is important to note that “the weighted average daily traffic corresponds to the number of vehicles that, on average, travel the length of each road every day”, which in the case of the Via Rápida stretches between Caniçal and Ribeira Brava over 44 km, with two lanes in both directions.