A partnership agreement between local stakeholders to find solutions to reduce traffic congestion and Co2 emissions has been signed at the Tarxien Local Council.
During the meeting the partners Transport Malta, Eurofreight Ltd, Local Wardens, GRTU and the Tarxien Local Council stressed the importance of bringing all stakeholders together to find ways of reducing the impact on the environment that freight transport causes, whilst maintaining the competitiveness of the sector in the industry.
Tarxien mayor Chev Paul Farrugia spoke about the initiatives such as a public forum and the involvement of the Neighbourhood watch group to create public awareness and also involve the citizens in the decision-making process.
The Freight Quality Partnership is one of the key measures planned by the C-Liege, an Intelligent Energy Europe Project partly co-financed by EACI and aimed at empowering a cooperative approach between public and private stakeholders that is targeted on the reduction of energetic and environmental impacts of freight transport in European cities and regions. In order to reach this objective, C-LIEGE will promote cleaner and energy efficient freight movements in urban areas.
The Freight Quality Partnership will consist of a permanent forum that will be meeting every 3-4 months to discuss Freight Transport issues and will set a strategy towards a better management of Freight Transport within the locality of Tarxien through green measures that have successfully been introduced and implemented at EU level. The forum hopes to convene in April for its first official discussion.
The Freight Quality Partnership in Tarxien aims at offering key stakeholders the possibility to meet and come up with concrete proposals and also disseminate good practice such as loading and uploading bays in front of shops which are present in some areas. The forum will represent the first of this kind in Malta and hopefully will attract the interest of other Maltese localities.
Besides the LFDP, the FQP will discuss other measures based on the C-Liege list of best practices already in place in several EU cities.