APDL Idles the Ponte Móvel de Leixões for a 90-Day, €5.63 Million Repaint, Hub Swap and Repaving — A28 Diversion and Free Shuttle Bridge the Crossing

The Ponte Móvel de Leixões (Leixões Mobile Bridge), the road, pedestrian and cyclist link that spans the Douro estuary mouth between Matosinhos and Leça da Palmeira, was closed to all traffic at first light on Monday, 15 June 2026 and will remain offline for up to 90 days. The works package, announced by the Administração dos Portos do Douro, Leixões e Viana do Castelo (APDL — Administration of the Ports of the Douro, Leixões and Viana do Castelo), is the largest single intervention on the structure since it was commissioned in 2005.

According to APDL's project sheet, the scope covers a full renewal of the anticorrosive protection system and a structural repaint, the replacement of pedestrian deck coverings, the substitution of safety railings and the relaying of the road surface. The headline structural item is the replacement of the central rótula (hub) that allows the deck to swing open for shipping movements — a piece that, by APDL's own engineering assessment, has reached the end of its design life and can only be swapped while the bridge is fully immobilised.

The financial envelope is €5.63 million in total project cost, of which €4.5 million is allocated to the core construction works. The European Union is co-financing 71.19% of the total through PACS (Programa de Acção pelo Clima e Sustentabilidade, the Climate Action and Sustainability Programme) within the Sustentável 2030 (Sustainable 2030) operational programme; APDL is funding the balance from its own port-revenues budget.

Road traffic for the duration of the closure has been redirected onto the A28 motorway and the IC1 / Viaduto da Via Rápida (Express Way Viaduct) in both directions, a detour that adds roughly four kilometres to a Matosinhos-to-Leça crossing that normally takes minutes. APDL is operating a free shuttle service for pedestrians, cyclists and scooter users from 07:00 to 22:00 at 15-minute headways, then at 20-minute headways from 22:00 to 07:00, with stops on each side of the estuary at Matosinhos and Leça da Palmeira. The shuttle is funded inside the same €5.63 million envelope and is contractually required to operate throughout the closure window.

Luísa Salgueiro, who leads the Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos (Matosinhos Municipal Council), framed the intervention as overdue and necessary, noting that the bridge handles a mix of port-worker commuting, school-run traffic and weekend tourism flows that will all have to absorb the diversion. APDL's planning materials anticipate the heaviest queuing on the A28 during the morning peak through the first two weeks of closure, after which traffic patterns are expected to settle.

For the port operation itself, the closure window has been calibrated to minimise commercial disruption. The Porto de Leixões berthing schedule normally requires the bridge to swing for vessel transits multiple times a day; during the 90-day window, traffic into and out of the inner berths will be reorganised around fixed slots so that no shipping operation is held up by an immobile span. APDL has committed to a tracking dashboard that will publish weekly progress against the 90-day deadline, with the bridge scheduled to reopen no later than mid-September 2026.