Portugal: bike and boat for the link between Lisbon city and the Costa da Caparica Portugese
Type of environment: beach recreation Partners involved: AGENEAL Almada is a Portuguese Municipality located on the left bank of River Tagus, across from Lisbon. It has 160.000 inhabitants living on 72 km2. It’s linked with the Portuguese capital by a 3 km suspended bridge for cars and trains and two regular boat lines. In spring, summer and autumn time Almada’s 13 km of seashore, Costa da Caparica, are the first choice destination of the Great Lisbon population searching for beaches. This can create a severe mobility problem, because boats and trains cross the river linking central Lisbon to urban Almada, but not to the beach areas. This means that most people cross the bridge by car to get to the beaches. This bridge, which has already around 160 000 vehicles per day, gets really crowded on weekends and summer days and the 20 km ride can take up to 2 hours. The environmental and energy impacts of this amount of cars are obvious. Adding to air quality and noise problems, cars park near the delicate dune system that protects land from the ocean invasion, damaging the flora that sustains the dune and thus making it fragile. The aim of the STREAM-project in Portugal was to create and promote a sustainable alternative for the trip from Lisbon to Costa da Caparica beaches, developing a combination of cycling with a boat transfer: a bike&boat system.   Developing Boat&Bike & Bike&Ride systems   The idea is to allow people to come from Lisbon to the beaches of Almada, in Costa da Caparica, using the bike, doing it in a fun, comfortable and cheap way. The concept of Boat&Bike (target group – Lisbon citizens), means taking your bike on the boat to cross River Tagus and then riding the bike from the boat harbor in Almada, at Trafaria, 4,5 km to the beach area, at Costa de Caparica instead of using a private car.   The concept of Bike&Ride (target group – Trafaria and Lisbon citizens) means taking your own bike or a rented one at Trafaria and ride it 4,5 km to the beach area instead of using a private car. A cycleway is under construction to make this 4,5 km link between the boat harbor and the beaches. It will be finished in spring 2009. During STREAM, the conditions for the combination bike&boat have been constantly improved: The price of transporting a bicycle in the Lisbon – Trafaria boat was 1.60 €, but collaboration with the boat operator lead to the abolition of the fare. From 1st Oct 2006 transporting a bicycle in any boat is free of charge; The maximum number of bicycles on board was extended from 6 to 10 (2007) and then to 15 (2008), and equipment for the accommodation is being chosen for installation; The boat harbor building was completely refurbished during 2008; A closed bike parking with video surveillance has been created inside the Trafaria harbor.
The 1 800 000 Euro cycleway infrastructure between Trafaria harbor and Costa da Caparica has been awarded co-financing from the 7th Framework Programme for it’s intermodality value. The only problem is the delay in the construction of the infrastructure.     In order to start with the promotion of the cycle route, and the education about sustainable mobility in general, a virtual cycleway was developed with exactly the same route as the real one (including local buildings, the boat harbour, the beach, etc.). The virtual cycleway, a 3D simulator commanded by a real bicycle was developed by local institutions. It is an interactive equipment that promotes the use of the cycleway and the boat for touristic journeys. The Virtual Cycletrack has already been used at different exhibitions and for several educational activities.   Developing bike parking facilities   An Almada Bike Parking image was created and a prototype was designed and constructed. 102 new bike parking spaces were created along the cycleway, 20 of them inside the boat harbor with restricted access and video surveillance. More parking spaces will be created at the beaches as soon as the cycleway construction is finished and an evaluation of the importance of the different beaches takes place. A stair gutter to allow bicycles to be taken on the stairs to the beach area was also designed.       Development of bicycle relocation for the Bike&Ride systems A bike rental service will be implemented with at least two rental spots, one at the boat harbor in Trafaria and one at the central beach of Costa de Caparica. The pendulum character of the trips to the sea cost, with most people going to the beach in the first half of the day and coming back in the second half, makes the renting bike system very inefficient if bike relocation is not addressed. Therefore, a bike relocation plan for the Bike&Ride system was designed. Its application, in the scope of a rental bike system at both ends of the cycletrack (boat Trafaria harbor and beaches) has been included in the Almada City Council budget for 2009 and there is already a local bike shop who is interested in providing this service.   Promotion of the multimodal solutions at key spots A Promotion Plan for the Boat&Bike system has been designed, including the design of specific communication materials, promotion in newspapers and radio-spots, as car drivers are a particularly interesting target group. The strongest part of the marketing campaigns will start around the opening of the cycleway in spring of 2009, as the works are about to finish. Nevertheless, a lot of Boat&Bike promotion campaigns have taken place already.   General campaign about sustainable mobility   This action is addressed all year around in several events, but in particular during the European Mobility Week, which is a very important event in Almada. In 2007 and 2008, campaign actions included walking tours, cycling tours, sailing tours, health check-ups, bicycle check-ups, children visits to the public transport operator’s facilities, funny mobility for children, safe bicycle training for children, eco-driving training for adults, discussion forums, etc… During this event, the STREAM project and the concept of sustainable mobility for recreation received special attention the last two years.   Home Updated 05.02.09