The Ghadira road project will include a tidal lane that will not make use of mechanical bollards, but instead will see Transport Malta officers be called upon to divert traffic, Infrastructure Malta CEO Ivan Falzon told The Malta Independent.
“It is designed to cost nothing, there is no mechanical element. It is simple traffic management,” Falzon said.
The project in Triq il-Marfa, the main and only artery connecting the Gozo ferry terminal to the rest of Malta, commonly known as the Għadira Road, is expected to be ready for the summer months, with the finishing touches to continue at the end of summer and be completed next year.
There used to be a tidal lane system at the Marsa Junction when driving towards the roundabout that would take you to Paola, which was a mechanical system that would raise barriers blocking off one direction to give the other direction a better lane to improve the flow of traffic.
This tidal lane cost €234,779, which came out to an average of around €500 a day, as it was in operation for 15 months.
Asked why the tidal lane was being implemented instead of fixed lanes, he said that they could not implement two fixed lanes on both sides because of space limitations. In addition, he spoke about the importance of prioritising safety and implementing pavement.
Falzon said that the tidal lane is not some last-minute addition, but it was included from the early design stages.
Transport Malta officers, he said, will be called on-site to divert the traffic in exceptional circumstances where it would make sense to have two lanes going southbound and only one lane going northbound.
There will not be a mechanical system like the one that was used at the Marsa junction, therefore, “there won’t be a recurrent cost.”
“The project is designed to work, most of the time, without the use of a tidal lane. The tidal lane is there to be used in those exceptional circumstances where flow exceeds the project capacity.”
Last year Transport and Infrastructure Minister Aaron Farrugia told The Malta Independent that the government’s primary aim is for roads to be safe and more efficient for cars. Then if there is space for a bicycle lane, it will be included.
Falzon had told the Times of Malta on Tuesday that the safe lane, which is a narrow-dotted lane found behind the parking spots on the southbound lane, can act as a bicycle lane but also as a space where cars can wait to slide into a parking space and to provide a safe buffer zone for people loading and unloading beach equipment from their car boots.
When this example was mentioned as an example of IM adopting the same vehicle priority philosophy that Farrugia spoke about last year, Falzon clarified and said that “the safe lane is not a bicycle lane.”
“There is no cycle lane going through that road. But if you see our plans for the active mobility routes across Malta you will see that we are catering for the Ghadira area but diverting cyclists away from this restrictive main road.”
Asked whether the cyclists were allowed to cycle on the pavement, Falzon replied in the affirmative.
Plans are also being proposed for St Andrews Road, Swieqi by implementing two hairpin turns near Luxol. Falzon was asked whether segregated safe cycle lanes will be implemented in the St Andrew’s road project. He said that the proposal includes a dedicated cycle lane that will not “necessarily be segregated because it will be shared.”
Falzon pointed out that on IM’s website, there are clear plans for active mobility plans, which were accepted by NGOs and other stakeholders.
“Sometimes there are limitations and we cannot include everything so we have to prioritise.”
Cycling NGO Rota published a statement expressing its concerns over the proposed infrastructure as the early draft, once again, is “car-centric.”
“The car-centric nature of the concept and its negative impact it's leaving on active mobility, needs to be challenged. In today's day and age we should be prioritising the movement of people over cars.”
A spokesperson from Rota has also said that it has not been consulted about this project yet and the plans revealed by MaltaToday were the first plans it saw for the project.
“It's impossible for a few volunteers at Rota to chase and check every permit, trying to understand what is going on from bits and pieces of information we manage to find. We solemnly request to be included in consultations from the early design stages, alongside councils and other stakeholders before it's too late, to make sure together that the project is planned holistically with space being fairly distributed towards all road users without afterthought.”