To many vehicles and the government do nothing.
At the beginning of 2023 there were around 2000/3000 rental cars, now there are over 10,000, and an average of 300-400 cars coming to the island every month, with this month already confirmed for over 500 more cars.
The news of yet another morning of heavy traffic on the highway provoked several comments on DIÁRIO’s Facebook page. One reader’s diagnosis was that there are “too many cars on this island”. “Unfortunately, only our government officials don’t see this”, added another citizen. “This hasn’t really started yet. The way the car rental companies are doing, with more and more cars and the authorities looking the other way, one day no one will be able to get around”, lamented one reader. Do citizens have reason to believe that political decision-makers are undervaluing the situation?
A look at the DIÁRIO archive reveals that excessive car traffic has been a topic of discussion in Madeiran society for over three decades. The first time the Regional Government addressed the issue was in February 1990, when the then Regional Secretary for Public Administration, Bazenga Marques, called a meeting with several entities (CMF, PSP, ACIF, ASSICOM, Horários do Funchal, Antral and ANTRAM) to prepare a joint action to improve traffic in Funchal. A month later, when asked about the growing number of cars and the measures to be taken in this regard, Bazenga Marques said that it was not possible to stop the increase in cars in the archipelago, since the free movement of goods and people between the Region and the mainland could not be prevented, especially since this would lead to the ageing of the fleet. He also said that the construction of new roads would allow “significant decongestion of traffic”, alleviating the problem of excess vehicles.
During the electoral campaign for the local elections of December 1993, the issue was once again on the agenda. One of the main concerns of the PS candidate for the Funchal City Council was the heavy traffic of light passenger cars in the capital. The candidate André Escórcio was concerned about the “path to disruption” caused by the entry of 250 more cars per month into the regional market. At the time, he proposed a policy to encourage the use of public transport and the construction of car parks on the outskirts of the city, in order to relieve congestion in the centre.
This position sparked discussion on the subject, with DIÁRIO columnist Duarte Jardim describing the idea of reducing or banning the entry of cars into the Region as “ridiculous”. “The traffic problems in our Region cannot be justified by the excess of vehicles in circulation, because it would be ridiculous to compare our motorization rate with that of other countries in the European Community”, wrote this contributor.
In March 1995, when it was estimated that 40,000 cars were circulating in Madeira, DIÁRIO addressed the issue again. The previous year, 5,225 light vehicles had been unloaded at the port of Funchal. Placed in single file, these cars filled the streets from Pontinha to Monte. When asked whether Madeira should not have a systematic limit on the number of cars entering, the then regional director of Land Transport, Cruz Neves, said that such a hypothesis would not be justified. The then regional director of Roads, Filipe Ferreira, also downplayed the problem and assured that with the construction of Cota 40 and the expressway, which would be completed in 1999, everything would be “in a position to definitively free the city” of Funchal from the traffic problem.
In March 2000, engineer João Correia, who was head of the Urban Solid Waste Removal Division at the CMF, put his finger on the sore spot in an opinion piece: “Almost everyone says, in coffee shop conversations, that the excess of cars is already a major environmental problem. What is missing now is for the competent authorities to acknowledge that we are facing a problem that needs to be studied and, after that, to have the courage to intervene in the system with measures that safeguard our health, our environment and our tourism”. Eight months later, João Correia was called to the Regional Government, having been regional director of Basic Sanitation (2000-2008), Environment (2007-2011) and Spatial Planning and Environment (2011-2015).
In the campaign for the 2001 local elections, the CDU candidate in the municipality of Funchal once again addressed the problem of “too many cars”. This party advocated strengthening the public transport network and promoting other means of transport, particularly bicycles.
On 18 November 2008, during a meeting of the Civitas project, the vice-president of the CMF, Bruno Pereira, acknowledged that the practical measures adopted on the ground in the municipality of Funchal to promote the use of public transport as the preferred means of accessing the city were not enough to change mentalities, as the use of cars was still significant.
After the financial crisis of 2007/2008, criticism regarding the intensity of car traffic eased. During the pandemic, with the severe restrictions on traffic, the problem ceased to exist. However, with the resumption of economic activity in 2022 and 2023, complaints from Madeirans about this issue returned to the agenda, especially due to the increase in traffic during peak hours on the highway and the high influx of rental cars in the main tourist attractions, such as Pico do Areeiro, Rabaçal, Ponta de São Lourenço and the center of Funchal. The situation has worsened this year. To give you an idea, if at the beginning of 2023 there were 2,000/3,000 rent-a-car vehicles registered in Madeira, today there will be around 10,000 vehicles.
Despite complaints and lamentations from various sectors of the population, the Regional Government has not been aware of any measures penalising or restricting the entry and circulation of cars in our archipelago over the last few decades, nor have it made any declarations of intent to do so. The current government policy follows the guidelines set out in the Action Plan for Sustainable Mobility of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (PAMUS) in force since mid-2019, which merely outlines strategies and actions to promote public transport, both for residents and tourists.
We can therefore conclude that the Regional Government recognises that there is a problem with the number of light vehicles in circulation in the archipelago. However, it has adopted measures that do not penalise this type of transport, hoping that the difficulties will be resolved with the voluntary adoption of public transport by citizens. In this sense, we can conclude that the government has downplayed the issue and does not consider it a serious and urgent problem.
