San Ma Lou will not be pedestrianised again in the near future due to upcoming roadworks, despite having become a highly popular attraction over the Lunar New Year holidays.
Announcing the decision at a plenary meeting yesterday, the acting president of the Cultural Heritage Council and president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Leong Wai Man said that the government had received many opinions from the public supporting the recent pedestrianisation of the city’s main thoroughfare. Her remarks were reported in Macau Post Daily.
Officially dubbed “Strolling through Almeida Ribeiro – Pilot Scheme for a Pedestrian Area,” the project galvanised San Ma Lou, known in Portuguese as Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, during the first three days of Chinese New Year in January and again during Lantern Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, in early February.
The project cost some 2.6 million patacas, mostly spent on the construction of installations and management.
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Leong said she believed that opinions received from the public, including suggestions on how to better introduce the cultural and historical heritage of the avenue’s surrounding buildings, would be helpful for similar projects in the future.
She added that the government would continue to think of different ways to revitalise the city’s cultural heritage buildings and old quarters, stressing that there could be different means to revitalise Macao’s old quarters, “not necessarily” by applying the same model as San Ma Lou to other old districts.
This was the first time that the 620-metre-long avenue, which was built in the 1920s, had been turned into a pedestrian precinct, the Macau Post Daily reported.
According to the Cultural Affairs Bureau, 140,000 people visited the avenue during its five-day, two-round pedestrianisation, comprising both local and tourists. While many people in Macao welcomed the initiative, others complained about its adverse impact on traffic and public transport. Some traders in the neighbourhood reported an increase in turnover, others reported the opposite.
Meanwhile, at yesterday’s meeting the council outlined several heritage projects it intended to tackle in 2023, including the opening of the Lai Chi Vun Naval Shipyards, the restoration of the Former Iec Long Panchões Factory and the Pátio da Eterna Felicidade, the launch of the full version of the virtual-reality exhibition “Visiting the Ruins of St. Paul in Space and Time,” and the installation of information boards at heritage buildings.
