Hi there,
In today’s post I tell you how finally the City Council deigns to fix the sidewalk of my street after two years of complaints.
As I have been telling you in several posts since I moved to Porto, in this city people do whatever they want because the competent authorities do nothing.
The Portuguese are experts in driving badly violating all possible laws and also, they are professionals in parking in forbidden areas.
Even if there is enough space to park properly, a Portuguese will always leave his car badly parked.
So, since I moved to the new house, it has been a problem to always find the cars parked on the sidewalk when in the area where I live there is always plenty of parking space.
On my street specifically, the fact that people left their cars parked on top of the curb meant that the bus had to pull up to the other sidewalk to get through.
I noticed that right where a van would normally park and where the bus would pull up, the sidewalk was completely broken and was deteriorating more and more.
I then began to complain to the City Council, making the problem known.
I sent countless complaints with photos of the cars parked on the sidewalk and with the license plate visible so that they would proceed to fine them.
The answer was that the municipal police had to place the ticket on the spot when they caught them doing the infraction, so I had to call them immediately to report the occurrence.
Several times I called, and they told me that I had to wait because that problem was not a priority and that they did not have enough means. No one ever came.
I spent months sending complaints with evidence to the City Council and the municipal police and the problem persisted.
I asked for the broken sidewalk to be repaired, and they told me they had no budget for the next 3 or 4 years.
I requested that bars be put in place to prevent cars from parking on top of the sidewalk and was told that it was not possible because of the “accessibility of the sidewalk”.
The sidewalk in question was narrow so not even a wheelchair could fit, and it was broken, so you couldn’t even walk on it. In other words, there was no accessibility to maintain.
The situation was so absurd that to one of my many complaints they responded that it was normal for the sidewalk to be broken since cars parked on it and the bus drove over it daily.
On December 24, 2023, at ten o’clock at night a lone man from the City Council arrived and proceeded to pour cement on top of the broken sidewalk.
The next day, that cement that had been poorly placed was already starting to break.
I began to make complaints again since the sidewalk was now worse, broken and covered with debris from the broken cement. In addition, the man who swept the street could not clean that piece of sidewalk, so it was getting more and more disgusting.
A third world situation
In November it occurred to me to send an email to the president of the Freguesia de Campanhã. They replied immediately saying that they would send my request to the City Council.
To my surprise, in the middle of the month they came to repair the sidewalk and this time they did it right.
The bad thing is that they did not repair the whole part that was damaged, but only a part that had the debris of the badly placed cement on top of it.
Therefore, I had to take pictures again and send a new claim.
At the same time, I received a response from the City Council stating that they were evaluating the possibility of putting flexible bars on the sidewalk to prevent cars from parking on top of it.
At the beginning of December, I contacted them again to show that the damaged sidewalk had not been fully repaired.
I will continue to tell you if one day they deign to repair the sidewalk in its entirety.