When the Roads Begin to Tell Their Age: Terceira Island Council President Calls for a Regional Maintenance Plan

Marcos Couto warns that deterioration of the Azores’ regional road network can no longer be postponed indefinitely, calling for long-term planning, clearer responsibility, adequate financing and a serious discussion about transferring greater powers—and the corresponding resources—to municipalities

Roads are among those public works that become almost invisible when they function well. We travel them without thinking about the asphalt beneath us, the drainage beside us, the retaining walls protecting us or the years of maintenance required to keep them safe. Their importance becomes visible gradually, through another pothole, another fractured surface, another agricultural road increasingly difficult to navigate, until deterioration itself becomes part of the landscape. For Marcos Couto, President of the Terceira Island Council, that gradual accumulation has reached a point at which the maintenance of the Azores’ regional road network is becoming a problem that can no longer simply be postponed. His concern extends beyond Terceira. Roads throughout the archipelago, he argues, are showing significant signs of deterioration at precisely the moment when the financial mechanisms that helped build or rehabilitate much of the network are no longer available for its maintenance. What is required now, Couto maintains, is not another isolated intervention whenever a road reaches an unacceptable condition, but something more difficult and ultimately more responsible: a planned, mapped and financially realistic regional strategy extending across several years and all nine islands.

The problem is partly the consequence of history and partly one of governance. Couto notes that, beginning with the most recent European Community funding framework, direct European support ceased to be available for the rehabilitation and maintenance of regional roads. Many roads originally benefited from European financing, but their continuing maintenance must increasingly be supported through the Regional Budget. At the same time, responsibility for some roads—particularly agricultural roads, but also other routes—has been administratively transferred to municipalities without, according to Couto, the corresponding financial resources being transferred with them. The Terceira Island Council had already drawn attention to this situation several months ago, arguing that responsibility must be clarified. The Statute of Terrestrial Roads of the Autonomous Region of the Azores dates from 2003 and was updated in 2008; it is now 2026, Couto observes, and the road network has changed substantially during those years. Agricultural roads formerly under the responsibility of IROA have, in some instances, passed administratively to municipalities, creating a situation in which local authorities may possess responsibility on paper without necessarily possessing the financial capacity required to fulfill it.

Agricultural Roads Are Also Economic Infrastructure

The distinction between an agricultural road and a major regional highway can appear significant on an administrative map, but it becomes considerably less important to the farmer who depends upon that road every day. Couto stresses that these routes are essential to the regional economy because they allow farmers to reach their land, move machinery, tend livestock and carry out the ordinary activities upon which agricultural production depends. A deteriorated agricultural road is therefore not simply an inconvenience for a few rural residents; it can become an economic constraint upon one of the Azores’ most important productive sectors. That is why the Island Council has called for clarification of the Regional Road Statute and for recognition that municipalities cannot indefinitely assume additional maintenance responsibilities without receiving the corresponding financial resources. The principle involved is straightforward: if responsibility is transferred, the means to exercise that responsibility must travel with it.

For Couto, however, agricultural roads represent only one dimension of a larger deterioration affecting the regional network itself. Under the present system, rehabilitation of regional roads remains the responsibility of the Regional Government and its public works authorities. He readily acknowledges the scale of the challenge. Maintaining an extensive road system spread across nine islands is extraordinarily expensive, and regional financial resources are limited. Yet precisely because it is impossible to repair everything simultaneously, he argues that planning becomes indispensable. “It is necessary to begin creating a maintenance plan for these roads,” Couto said, envisioning a system in which the Region would know, year by year, how much of the network would be rehabilitated, what the work would cost, on which islands it would take place and which interventions would receive priority. Such a framework would transform road maintenance from a succession of emergencies into a predictable public investment strategy.

A Five- or Ten-Year Map Instead of Permanent Emergency

Couto proposes that a regional road rehabilitation plan could extend across five or ten years, providing residents, businesses, municipalities and the Regional Government itself with a clear understanding of what must be done, when it will be done and how much investment will be required. Such a plan would not eliminate the financial limitations confronting the Region, nor would it suddenly repair every deteriorated road. Its value would instead lie in creating priorities and predictability. Some roads would necessarily come first, others later, but the decisions would exist within a publicly understandable framework rather than being made principally when deterioration became impossible to ignore. Couto points specifically to serious cases on Terceira, particularly in the municipality of Praia da Vitória, which the Island Council has already identified, while emphasizing that similar problems are visible elsewhere in the archipelago.

The financial reality, he acknowledges, is unavoidable. “It is a question of choices, and the Region will have to make choices,” he said. Money is scarce, and maintenance previously supported indirectly through the era of substantial European infrastructure investment must now compete for resources within the Regional Budget. This is precisely why a multiyear framework could become important. If the Region cannot rehabilitate the entire network today—and clearly it cannot—it can at least determine what will be done over the next five or ten years, establish the investment required and create a hierarchy based upon safety, economic importance and urgency. The alternative is more precarious: postponing maintenance until deterioration becomes so severe that intervention becomes both unavoidable and potentially more expensive.

Municipalism and the Argument for Government Closer to the Road

Couto’s argument does not stop at infrastructure. The deteriorating road network leads him toward a much broader question about how power itself is distributed within Azorean Autonomy. He has been an advocate for greater municipalism and sees road maintenance as one area in which decentralization could offer an alternative. His argument is based on proximity: a municipal council or parish government knows its territory intimately. Local authorities know which roads carry the greatest daily traffic, which agricultural routes are essential to producers, where deterioration is most serious and where an intervention can produce the greatest immediate benefit. “Management by proximity is always easier,” Couto argues. But decentralization, in his conception, cannot mean simply transferring responsibilities downward while keeping financial resources above. Competencies and funding must move together.

Couto contrasts what he sees happening in the Azores with the transfer of responsibilities to municipalities on mainland Portugal, where, he argues, decentralization has been accompanied by corresponding financial transfers. In the Region, by contrast, he believes too much authority continues to remain concentrated at the level of the Regional Parliament and Regional Government. His criticism therefore reaches beyond asphalt and public works into the architecture of autonomous government itself. For Couto, roads and housing provide two particularly useful examples of areas in which municipalities could assume a stronger role if provided with adequate resources. He cites experiences on mainland Portugal, including Oeiras and municipalities in the interior, as examples of local government addressing housing challenges through greater proximity to community realities. Whether that model could or should be replicated in the Azores is inevitably a political question, but Couto’s position is clear: greater decentralization, accompanied by financial resources, could allow public money to be managed closer to the communities it is intended to serve.

A Debate Larger Than Asphalt

The discussion consequently becomes one about the future evolution of Azorean Autonomy. Couto argues that the Region is generally resistant to institutional change, particularly when that change affects existing distributions of political power. He points to the recurring phenomenon of political parties or leaders proposing reforms while in opposition—such as reducing the number of deputies or altering parliamentary structures—only for those reforms to disappear once they enter government. In his view, the Azores require a deeper reconsideration of the autonomous system, but such reform would inevitably disturb established centers of authority. “There is a profound alteration of the autonomous regime that is urgently needed,” he argues, while acknowledging that it would affect too many “accommodated powers” and that, so far, the political courage necessary to undertake such a transformation has not emerged.

That argument is Couto’s political interpretation of the problem, and others may naturally differ over whether decentralization would produce greater efficiency, how responsibilities should be divided between regional and municipal government, or whether municipalities possess the technical and administrative capacity to assume additional functions. But the physical condition of the roads provides a concrete setting in which that larger institutional debate becomes visible. Governance theories can remain abstract until they encounter a pothole. Then questions about who owns a road, who maintains it, who pays for it and who decides when it will be repaired become immediately practical.

Roads as an Economic and Tourism Question

Couto also speaks from another institutional position: he is President of the Angra do Heroísmo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and from that perspective the condition of the road network becomes part of the islands’ economic presentation to the outside world. Asked whether deteriorating roads constitute a good calling card for tourism, his response was unequivocal: “Obviously not.” Traveling on many of the islands’ roads, he acknowledged, is simply not pleasant. Yet he returned immediately to the financial dilemma, using a familiar Portuguese metaphor: the blanket is too short to cover both the head and the feet. Limited resources mean that choices must be made.

For an economy in which tourism, agriculture, commerce and mobility all depend upon transportation infrastructure, however, road maintenance cannot easily be treated as an isolated public-works expense. A road is part of the tourism experience long before a visitor reaches a hotel. It is part of agricultural productivity before milk, meat or other products reach the marketplace. It affects businesses transporting goods, residents commuting to work, families reaching schools and services, and communities maintaining connections across rural territory. Maintenance may therefore lack the political visibility of inaugurating a new infrastructure project, but its economic value can be just as significant. Building creates the photograph; maintenance preserves the usefulness.

Planning Before the Next Funding Opportunity Arrives

Asked about the possibility of using national funding, including resources associated with the announced Portugal Transformation, Recovery and Resilience framework, Couto returned once more to what may be the central word in his entire argument: planning. The Azores Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he notes, has for years advocated a multiyear investment framework that would clearly identify the Regional Government’s planned investments over subsequent years. Some steps have been taken, including by the present Regional Government, but in his assessment the practice has not yet been fully incorporated into regional governance. Without that structure, even the arrival of new national or other external financing can create difficulties because the Region must first know which projects are priorities, what they cost, when they should proceed and which funding mechanisms can appropriately support them.

“The maintenance of the regional road network is effectively beginning to be a problem,” Couto warns. It may still be possible, he says, to “sweep it under the rug” for a little longer, but eventually the condition of the network will become practically impossible to avoid. That may be the most consequential point in the entire discussion because infrastructure deterioration has its own arithmetic. Maintenance postponed does not necessarily disappear from the budget; sometimes it merely returns later as rehabilitation at a considerably greater cost. A small defect becomes a damaged surface, water penetrates, weather enlarges the deterioration, and what might once have required routine maintenance eventually demands substantial reconstruction.

The roads of the Azores are therefore telling a story larger than their cracks and worn surfaces. They speak about the legacy of European investment and the challenge of maintaining what previous generations built. They speak about scarce regional resources and competing public priorities. They raise questions about the relationship between regional and municipal government, about whether autonomy itself should become more decentralized, and about the difference between constructing infrastructure and possessing the institutional discipline to preserve it for decades afterward.

And perhaps most importantly, they remind us that good government is not measured only by what it builds.

There is political ceremony in opening a new road. There are speeches, photographs, plaques and ribbon cuttings. Maintenance offers almost none of that. Nobody gathers to celebrate a drainage channel that has been cleared before winter or asphalt repaired before the road becomes dangerous. Yet much of responsible public administration consists precisely of these less visible acts—the patient preservation of what already belongs to everyone.

Marcos Couto’s warning is therefore fundamentally about time. The Region can continue responding road by road, island by island, as deterioration becomes unavoidable, or it can attempt to map the coming decade before the next decade maps itself through neglect. Because roads, like institutions, rarely collapse in a single day. They deteriorate gradually, almost politely, giving us years of warnings. The real question is whether we choose to repair them while they are still asking—or wait until they begin to demand.

Based on an interview in Diário Insular-José Lourenço, director. The photos are also from DI.