The Coimbra City Council services received a request for a subdivision license for the entire area of the Coimbra bus station, revealed the municipal councilor responsible for urban planning and transport.
The owner of the land on which the Coimbra bus station currently operates, located on Avenida Fernão de Magalhães, presented an “evaluation process of an urban development operation for a subdivision for the entire area”, councilor Ana Bastos told the Lusa agency, when asked about new projects in the riverside area that will be served by the Mondego Mobility System (SMM).
The councilor clarified that the process does not imply that the bus terminal will be transformed in the short term, but, given the intention of its owner, the Municipality has already requested an urgent meeting with Transdev, which manages and operates that space, but which is not owner of the same.
Ana Bastos stressed that the Municipality, if the owner decides to move forward with the process, will try to ensure that the solution only progresses after the completion of the Coimbra intermodal station, designed for the current Coimbra-B (Estação Velha), within the scope of the high speed, and is expected to be completed in 2030.
“If I authorize an urban planning operation before we have a solution, we inherit a problem that we were not expecting to have so quickly”, said the councilor, admitting that she has “some difficulties in seeing a provisional intermediate scenario”, before the station intermodal is completed.
Without identifying the owner, the councilor acknowledged that the owner’s claim is legitimate, but stressed that the process is, for now, only under analysis.
“It is a legitimate claim, put forward by its own owner and we will have to analyze it. But we have no information. As soon as I found out about the owner’s intention, I asked for an urgent meeting with Transdev to understand his intentions”, he clarified.
According to Ana Bastos, the request submitted to the Municipality provides for the construction of several buildings in that area.
Questioned by the Lusa agency, Transdev stated that “it has no knowledge of any changes relating to the operation of the Coimbra bus terminal”.
“This terminal is a critical and essential infrastructure in the city, handling more than one million passengers annually”, highlighted an official company source.
The councilor mentioned that there are already few “expectant spaces” in the riverfront area which, within the scope of the SMM, will no longer have a railway connection, with the hope that Infraestruturas de Portugal will also soon be able to reformulate the project for its land next to to Estação Nova and “formalize it before the Coimbra City Council” (the process had been suspended to be in line with the Intermodal Station Detail Plan).
At the same time, another construction process is underway for a residential building on a plot between Rua dos Oleiros and the future SMM channel, whose request for prior information received conditional approval, approved at the Executive meeting on April 15th, he said.
