Just before breaking of for the Easter recess, our Parliament voted with near unanimity, minus two votes, in favour of the tunnel that will link Malta to Gozo.

Having a Gozitan mother, and grandmother and aunts, I am sensitive to the demand by people in Gozo for a more secure link than ships that get buffeted by wind and rain when winter storms rack the island; a more secure link than the present queuing and confusion at both ends – at Cirkewwa on Fridays and at Mgarr on Mondays.

I admit, too, that a permanent link formed part of the electoral manifestos of both the PL and PN.

However, to my mind, the alternatives have not been properly explored and the reasons for their elimination have not been thoroughly analysed.

The government’s choice of a tunnel has been pushed through and approved by an acquiescent Opposition without any real consideration of all that this choice implies.

The government has even gone ahead and ruled out a rail link between Malta and Gozo, such as there is, for instance, between France and the UK.

This will mean that once one pays the tariff, one will be able to drive through and add to the traffic congestion in both Gozo and Malta. As we already experience with the new cars arriving in Malta, the government abhors any mention of a numerus clausus. The congestion that one experiences even now will become far worse.

At the other end of the tunnel, incoming cars from Gozo will add to the confusion on Malta’s roads.

That is only one aspect of the problem.

I am still not convinced that a bridge would not have been better. It is true that winds sometimes sweep across the Gozo Channel, but other bridges have been built around the world and modern technology has made them safe. A bridge, to my mind, would not cause the environmental mess that a tunnel would cause.

And in this regard, I am still not convinced that we have the expertise needed to tunnel under the sea through rock formations that are reported to be frail. Even so, undersea tunnels have indeed been dug and are quite safe.

Maybe, I suspect, the tunnel idea has been pushed forward by developers and contractors who are more used to dealing with rock than steel bridges. And, of course, they will be able to take the rock that is excavated and dump it into the sea, thus creating the artificial islands everyone is talking about.

There is also the financial angle to consider. What would the total cost of the tunnel be and how will the expense be defrayed? People must be told how much a trip to Malta will cost per car and how this compares with today’s Gozo Channel fares.

Then, the time consumed. Let’s say that the tunnel shaves off two or three hours per trip, one is still faced with the inordinate amount of time getting from point A to point B in Malta. In the end, one any resultant gain may be quite minimal. This is the same argument one might make with regard to the road widening/improvement projects being carried out around the country. There will be gains, but these will be minimal.

Finally, and above all, the damage to the environment which nobody seems able to quantify ­– damage that will be irreversible and impossible to deny.

Parliament’s act of the Gadarine swine, with only two raising questions and objections, will surely come back to haunt us in the years to come.

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