Carry on and just do it

The time has come for the planners to disregard the constant carping that would hinder the planning of new roads for Malta.

Granted the sheer amount of cars on the road is at an all-time high and that any new road will eat into Malta’s meager amount of arable land.

But one must also realise that Malta’s existing roads carry a huge burden of old problems that were not solved in the past. And try as one might, no amount of alternative traffic plans will solve these fundamental problems.

Take for instance the government’s recent announcement regarding the upgrading of the road from Fleur-de-Lys to Rabat and especially the announcement of a bypass outside Attard.

Everyone who has had occasion to pass through Attard on any morning knows of the gridlock at that area where traffic has to slow down to pass at a snail’s pace through the centre of Attard. What many do not know is that plans for a bypass cutting through fields on the outskirts of the village have been planned for decades, but somehow were never taken up.

Now these voices are being heard again – loss

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of arable land, etc – and in Parliament David Agius gave them full exposure. These are his constituents, of course, but he is wrong, very wrong (wrong also in the hectoring voice he assumed when he spoke).

He has been criticised for his outburst by a PN local councilor and also indirectly by another MP from the same party and from the same district.

The recent traffic deaths and subsequent protests such as those on Sunday show that even in recent road improvements, skimping will not do. We cannot have, as we do have on the Coast Road for instance, bicycle lanes that stop at the most crucial parts. It now seems that the Kappara Junction, which was done after the Coast Road, does not have a proper bicycle path at least in places. And the signage and road planning at the point where the Serb cyclist lost his life are, it seems, quite primitive. And further up nearer St Julian’s the junction to Kappara is still undone.

There are two areas where there are huge traffic problems and no solutions so far, or at least where the solutions, although promised, have not been implemented.

One is the bottleneck at the end of the Gzira Marina Street, where Ta’ Xbiex begins. In 1990, when the Development Brief for the Manoel Island – Tigne project was drawn up, the government of the time committed itself to ease the traffic jams in this area by means of a feeder road going all the way to the Kappara Junction. There were plans to pull down some buildings and to do this road, but it was never done. The result are the massive traffic jams one sees there at any time of the day. The situation will never get better unless what was promised is finally done.

At the other end of Malta, around Smart City, concern is now being expressed about the massive traffic that will move to there when all the buildings in the area are up and running.

What many people have forgotten is that there was a clear commitment from the government of the time to create a road through Paola and Fgura to ease the traffic problems. Again, this road has not left the planning stage and the situation there will become another nightmare unless proactive planning takes over.