PORTUGUESE COMMUNIST PARTY

Parliamentary Group

Draft Law No. 635 / X-4ª

Alters the Road Code, allowing the averaging of legal habilitation for the driving of Category A1 vehicles to the driving licence that entivies

legally for the conduct of Category B vehicles.

It is increasingly apparent the need for the state to look for ways to strengthen the capacity of public transport as an alternative to transportation of its own. Not only on environmental grounds, but essentially on grounds of economic rationality and the promotion of the elevation of the quality of life of populations. Unruly urban planning and the geographical distribution of the dwelling areas occurring in some cities in the country have been systematically established in a perspective contrary to that of the welfare of the populations, making it increasingly elitized access to the central areas of cities for housing, which has led in many cases to abandonment, human desertification, and physical degradation of urban centres. This geographical distribution and this irrational planning of the cities that comes only to meet the interests that orbit around real estate speculation and, of course, the automobile production companies, gasolineers and oil companies, implies and requires populations, in particular workers, a daily pendular movement that carries economic, environmental and social costs that degrade the quality of life of as many as those affected by these pendular movements and by their consequences. In addition to the irrational planning of some urban areas, there is a marked political trend of centralisation and littering of the country. In fact, we have seen an increasingly heterogeneous country in the plan of geographical distribution and population density, entailing human desertification of the country's interior and excessive population concentration in urban regions that implies a degradation of urban quality of life. Urban infrastructure does not support, to a large extent, all the demands caused by the urban and peri-urban population increase. Thus, we have seen a constant worsening of road traffic conditions, with serious environmental and economic implications. It degrades to the air quality within the cities and at the same time it requires citizens to pay an energy bill on which they have no responsibilities for being confronted with it as the only option. The quality of life, particularly in the "tempo-free" indicator is strongly affected by the conditions of circulation that do not meet a fluid mobility. The worker loses significant part of his day in dispositions, to the detriment of his family life, sporting or cultural. Another of the obvious consequences of the country's "macro-cefalization" in large urban areas and the abandonment of the interior and rural means is the unmeasured increase in the amount of car-circulating in the inner cities and that in their space park. The demand for parking is today for many representative of another waiting period and lost time, in addition to being also in many cases synonymous with the environmental degradation of the

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cities, of the mobility of citizens, particularly of citizens with visual or motor disabilities. In the face of a situation whose resolution goes through a set of integrated measures, with no single isolated being any solution, it matters still, minimizing the impacts of the consequences of the wrong policies on the citizens currently suffering, while simultaneously being part of a policy of the cities that takes into account in the first place the populations. Jointly with the implementation of measures that strengthen the capacities of public transport and foster their use and spatial planning policies that enable balanced and rational population dispersion, we should move forward in the a sense of promoting the quality of life of the citizen who is currently subjected to urban pressure, acting also on the issues of mobility and the means of transport, with collateral gains for an environment more are. The Community Directive 91 /439/CE is to allow Member States the possibility to equate the legal qualification for driving of light motor vehicles (currently classified as category B) to legal habilitation for the driving of vehicles of two power wheels and reduced cylinder. Indeed, this matter has already been even the subject of discussion in the Assembly of the Republic, on the occasion of a petition, motivating even a Draft Resolution. The big question raised during that discussion will have, however, been that of the impossibility of there being a tacit riding between the driver's license for the driving of light motor vehicles and the driving license for motorcycles driving. In the face of this and, because still if it appears to us appropriate to make provision for in the law the possibility of equating both qualifications, the CPP Parliamentary Group proposes through the present Draft Law, the equiparation of legal Habilitation for the conduct of motor vehicle cars to the legal Habilitation for the driving of two-wheel drive vehicles up to 125 cubic centimetres and limited to 15 cv (11kW), through application of the driver of the habilitation and subject to driving examination on a motorcycle of identical characteristics. That is, the present Project proposes to open the possibility of requiring the equipping of legal habilitation for the driving of category B vehicles to the legal qualification for the driving of A1 category vehicles, under the condition of the holder successfully perform a driving examination for this purpose. Currently, for a citizen to be the holder of a driving licence that entivites him to the A1 category has to resort to a driving school, where he will again complete the frequency to a Road Code course and a course of driving a motorcycle with less than 125 cc. This current need corresponds to a significant financial effort and requires relevant hourly availability-time and money-resources-increasingly scarce resources for the overwhelming majority of the population. This current legal requirement has ended up redunting, often, in the objective impediment of obtaining habilitation for the conduct of two-wheeled and low-power vehicles. The unbureaucratization of obtaining the driving license for motorcycles can be a reasonable and rational facilitation mechanism for the option by the motorcycle as a way to improve the quality of life of the citizens and to improve significantly individual mobility and the fluidity of traffic, mainly in urban areas.

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Thus, within the framework of the applicable regimental and constitutional provisions, the Group

Parliamentarian of the Portuguese Communist Party presents the following Draft Law:

Article 1º

(Subject)

Article 123º of the Road Code, approved by the Decree-Law No. 114/94, revised and

republished by Decree-Law No. 44/2005 of February 23, it is replaced by the following:

" Article 123º

(...)

1-...

2-...

3-...

4-...

a) ...;

b) ...;

c) ...;

d) Cycling of rods not more than 125 cm3 and of maximum power up to 11 KW.

5-...

6-...

7-...

8-...

9-For the purposes of paragraph 4 (d) of this Article, the licence holders

valid for category B may drive vehicles of category A1, upon realisation of

a practical driving examination.

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Article 2º

(Regulation)

The Government shall regulate, within 30 days after the publication of this Law, the evidence

constitutive of the practical driving examination.

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Article 3º

(Entry into force)

This Law shall come into force with the publication of the respective regulations.

Assembly of the Republic, January 8, 2009

The Deputies,

MIGUEL TIAGO; ANTÓNIO FILIPE; BERNARDINO SOARES; BRUNO DIAS; JOSÉ SOEIRO; JORGE

MACHADO; JOÃO OLIVEIRA; AUGUSTINE LOPES; JERONIMO DE SOUSA