Resende Council president Fernando Silvério says EN 222 closure forces unsafe school travel and harms economy

Resende Council president Fernando Silvério told Lusa news agency on Monday that the closure of National Road 222 (EN 222) is forcing pupils to travel along an unsafe road and is also restricting the local economy.

Safety concerns on the EN 222 diversion route

According to Silvério, the key issue with the alternative route is “the driving conditions and the safety in which children are transported, particularly from the parish of Barrô”, where EN 222 has been closed since 12 February.

He said the road was shut following the storms that hit Portugal and that, since then, Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) “still hasn’t presented any plan for its refurbishment, despite the constant pressure from the Council”.

“Three months are going by, 90 days, and the only information I have is only about the procedure. Whether it will be contracting, works, in other words, it’s the fastest they can do, but it stops there. I don’t see any work on site, I’m not given a date. Nothing. I have no works plan at all,” he complained.

He described this as an “unknown that is becoming unacceptable”, because it leaves residents and the local authority under “very significant strain, because there is no answer to give to the people” who live in the municipality.

“The road being used as an alternative has no safety conditions. As well as the children having to get up much earlier because the journey is longer, what worries me most is the lack of safety in how they’re transported,” he stressed.

Silvério paid “tribute to all the drivers”, particularly bus drivers, because “they have to be people with enormous skill” to drive on that road.

“There are seven buses travelling on that road every day. If a car, in some places, can barely pass another car, imagine when a bus meets a car in the middle of the road,” he said.

The closure’s impact across Resende

He argued the disruption “doesn’t only affect the people of Resende, especially in the parishes of Barrô and São Martinho, where the closure happened, but affects the entire municipality, because there isn’t another road with the characteristics of EN 222”.

Since the road was closed to traffic, the Municipality of Resende “prepared roads to serve as an alternative, which they aren’t, but they are the only alternative” to the national road: “one is an unsealed dirt track, but it allows the cherries to be transported”, and another route has “improved, and is improving, driving conditions, particularly by widening” the carriageway.

Economic losses and access problems in Viseu district

Silvério said there is “a large company in the municipality” that markets cherries and is suffering heavy losses due to the extra costs required for its lorries to travel. “We’re talking about detours lasting more than an hour and, with fuel prices as they are, imagine the loss,” he said.

He also underlined that access into Resende, in the north of Viseu district, is “one of the biggest constraints in the municipality” and that, as a result, it is “already a municipality with limited ability to attract companies-now, with these closures, it’s becoming very difficult even for those already here”.