Porto, July 10, 2026 (Lusa) - The Mayor of Portugal's second city, Porto, Pedro Duarte, said on Friday that free public transport will not be the “silver bullet” to solve the city’s mobility issues, but it does provide the legitimacy to introduce more restrictive measures on car use.
“We do not believe this is a silver bullet that will suddenly transform mobility in the city. It is important that we are aware of the expectations that lie ahead,” said the mayor today, at a ceremony in front of Trindade metro station.
For Pedro Duarte, free public transport – which comes into effect today for holders of the Porto municipal card, “this is a very important first step; it is a vital incentive to bring about a paradigm shift in people’s lives, whereby private transport becomes a secondary option and public transport becomes the essential, priority means of travel in the city”.
“This paradigm shift will certainly take many years, but it is through these incentives that we will be able to ensure that it eventually happens,” he said.
As for traffic, the expectation “is not that it will have an immediate transformative effect”, but the mayor noted that he wants to “start changing” the paradigm.
“We have a vision of a city that prioritises quality of life, the individual well-being of each person and our well-being as a community, and to achieve this we cannot have a city made up of cars stuck in traffic. That is the antithesis of well-being,” he remarked.
The aim is for “public spaces to be enjoyed by people”, rather than people “honking their horns” and “grumbling” inside their cars because of time wasted in traffic.
As well as mentioning the plan to extend bus lanes in the district by six kilometres by the end of the year, bringing the total to 22, the mayor said that he will now be “able to take certain measures which may not be so popular or so car-friendly, but which now have greater legitimacy, given that the city council is offering free transport to those who need it”.
When also asked about the scope of this measure for the Porto Metropolitan Area (AMP), given that only city residents will be able to benefit from free travel, Pedro Duarte, who is president of the AMP, said he cannot “make decisions on behalf of the other mayors”.
“For us to have a metropolitan transport and mobility strategy, it is very important that everyone embraces this idea that they should invest in public transport. How they go about doing so is up to each individual. Here in Porto, we are probably going further than anyone else,” he acknowledged.
However, regarding this measure, “implementing it on a metropolitan scale” is not possible, he said, reiterating that he believes “the country should move towards a different model” with “a level of political power situated between local government and central government”.
“If we had that, perhaps we could be more ambitious in this area. Until we can, I think Porto can serve as a pilot scheme, a seed that will bear fruit, and then perhaps others will realise that it is a measure worth adopting too,” he said.
As for the financial sustainability of the measure, Pedro Duarte said he believed the estimated €20-25 million would be sufficient, but acknowledged that, in the future, the tourist tax might be raised to “Lisbon’s figure”, that is, from €3 to €4.
As for whether the money might be needed for potential future investments in the Porto Public Transport Company (STCP), Pedro Duarte stated that there is a 10-year plan that had already been drawn up before this measure.
“This plan is ambitious and therefore already envisages a significant increase in the number of buses. Not least because there is sometimes a bit of confusion on this point: it is not necessarily by introducing more buses that a problem of increased demand will be solved, because then the buses themselves end up stuck in traffic,” he said.
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