..but Right Now, It Fails Quite Badly
At first glance, Porto doesn’t look like an obvious cycling city. The dramatic drop down to the Douro River, the steep gradients, and the limited number of river crossings all seem to argue against it. Add to that narrow historic streets and you might assume cycling was always going to struggle here.
But that first impression is misleading. In structural terms, Porto has some of the best preconditions for cycling of almost any southern European city — and the fact that it hasn’t capitalised on them is a missed opportunity of the first order.
A City with Almost No Need for Through Traffic
One of Porto’s biggest hidden advantages is something most cycling debates overlook: its motorway geometry.
Porto is effectively encircled by a near-continuous ring formed by the A20, A44, and A1 motorways. Together, these routes allow traffic to bypass the city centre entirely. There is simply no strategic need for through traffic to pass via central Porto at all.
Even more striking is the level of access this ring provides. There are around 13 motorway junctions distributed around the city, feeding directly into different districts. In other words, Porto already has exactly what Dutch cities deliberately built:
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easy access to the city
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no need to drive through it
This is the perfect starting point for a radically different transport model.
Filtered Permeability: Porto’s Missed Opportunity
Places like Houten in the Netherlands show what happens when this logic is taken seriously. In Houten, cars can reach any neighbourhood easily from the ring road — but cannot cut through the town centre. Walking and cycling routes are direct and continuous, while car routes are indirect.
Porto could do something similar on a much larger and more ambitious scale.
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Driving would be made easy to parking decks near motorway access points
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Through traffic would be removed from central streets
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On-street parking could be largely eliminated
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Residential streets could be filtered so only walking, cycling, and public transport flow freely
This isn’t anti-car. It’s pro-city.
Gradients Are Not the Real Problem
Porto’s hills are often cited as the reason cycling struggles. In reality, they’re a solved problem.
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Modern e-bikes flatten gradients completely
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Distances in Porto are short
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The effective radius of the city — roughly 5 to 7 kilometres — is ideal for cycling
With a large-scale, affordable e-bike rental scheme, hills stop being a barrier and start becoming irrelevant. Many cities with far worse gradients already do this successfully.
A Compact City with Perfect Scale
Another overlooked fact: Porto is not large.
The near-circular motorway ring encloses:
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the historic centre
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key residential areas
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both major railway stations (São Bento and Campanhã)
This is exactly the scale at which cycling works best. Most everyday journeys fall comfortably within a 20–30 minute cycle, even at a relaxed pace.
What Porto Chooses Instead
Instead of exploiting these advantages, Porto has ended up with:
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fragmented cycling infrastructure
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poor river crossings for bikes
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streets that still prioritise through traffic
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missed chances when bridges were redesigned or rebuilt
The result is a city where cycling feels harder and more stressful than it needs to be, despite the fact that the underlying urban form is unusually favourable.
A Different Future Is Entirely Possible
Porto could become a city where:
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cars are welcome, but kept to appropriate routes
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parking is concentrated and predictable
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streets are calmer, quieter, and safer
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cycling and walking are the fastest ways to move locally
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the Metro does the heavy lifting for longer trips
None of this requires radical demolition or futuristic technology. It requires decisions, not inventions.
🌉 Eiffel’s Railway Bridge: A Missed Cycling Link
One of Porto’s most tantalising unrealised assets is Eiffel’s Maria Pia railway bridge, which once carried trains across the Douro and now sits unused beside the Dom Luís I Bridge. Structurally, the bridge was built to carry heavy rail traffic, so reopening it for walking and cycling is entirely plausible in engineering terms. The real challenges lie elsewhere: heritage protections, unclear ownership and responsibility, funding, and—most critically—the difficulty of creating gentle, accessible ramps on both banks of the river without damaging the surrounding urban fabric. None of these issues are insurmountable, but they require political will and coordinated planning. If resolved, the bridge could become one of Europe’s most dramatic cycling crossings, instantly transforming east–west connectivity and symbolising Porto’s commitment to active travel rather than missed opportunity.
Conclusion
Porto is not a bad cycling city because of its hills or its history. It’s a bad cycling city because it hasn’t chosen to be a good one yet.
With its motorway ring, compact scale, short distances, and growing public transport network, Porto could rival the best cycling cities in Europe — especially in the age of e-bikes.
The tragedy is not that Porto is difficult to cycle in.
It’s that it really didn’t have to be.