Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio has called morning rush-hour traffic on a heavily used highway leading into Lisbon a “daily tragedy” after he braved the motorway without his usual police escort, reports said on Thursday.
It took the president 40 minutes to travel just 13km on the IC19 highway that links Sintra, a mountain town north of Lisbon, with the centre of the Portuguese capital, daily newspaper Correio da Manha said.
Samapaio, the head of state, made the trip on Wednesday by minibus to see for himself what driving conditions are like on the road, which local media say is the most congested in Europe.
“This is a small daily tragedy,” the paper quoted him as saying afterwards.
“Sintra is the second-most-populated district in the country, but it is served by the same roads that existed 20 years ago. We can’t expect miracles.”
Sintra includes several suburbs that have sprung up around Lisbon over the past two decades and is home to 450 000 people, but the IC19 highway remains the only road linking the region to Lisbon. — AFP