The municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia will decide on the licensing and operation of tourist routes in the municipality next Monday. The document states that “the operation of regular tourist routes using any type of passenger transport now depends on a preliminary license, which is issued, as a rule, through an open competition under the conditions provided for in the regulations.”
Each operator can promote tourist routes with a maximum of 12 vehicles with more than nine seats, eight vehicles with nine or fewer seats, and two in the case of tourist trains. Licenses will be awarded by the City Council on a competitive basis for a period of seven years for vehicles with more seats and five years for tourist trains or vehicles with nine or fewer seats. The streets on which these vehicles will be allowed to pass will be specified in the assigned license, as well as stops and terminals. Tourist vehicles will not be allowed to travel on the BUS corridors.
Tourist routes can only be promoted from 09:00 to 20:00. Vehicles such as tour buses are required to transmit a GPS signal to the competent municipal authority for monitoring.
In an explanatory memorandum to the document, which will be voted on in a public session of the Chamber of Vila Nova de Gaia, the municipality states that the concentration of these vehicles in the historic center, without passing through other places of high tourist potential in the counties, “is likely to cause restrictions with very negative consequences in terms of circulation and overcrowding of public space.” Parking and stopping spaces requested by several tourist vehicles are an “increasingly scarce resource” so the municipality is now taking action.
The new rules aimed at managing the use of public space “promote a balanced compatibility of tourist traffic with non-tourist public transport, ensuring accessibility and smoothness of traffic,” the municipality said in a statement. The goal is also to deconcentrate and diversify the tourist offer.
Author: Manuel Jorge Bento
Source: CM Jornal
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