From Mr A. Cassar
Minister Austin Gatt should ensure that his spokesmen do not hoodwink the public with puerile excuses about the closure of Church Street, Paceville and the Tigullio car park give-away.
The ADT’s official reply to my letter to The Malta Independent tells us that a traffic impact assessment on Church Street is being considered by the “‘board of directors” of the Roads Division. Why wait for the Roads Division’s high-level board to decide, when there is a specific ADT department, and Mepa, to screen such day-to-day issues?
This is obviously a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It is surprising that these studies were actually commissioned after the closure of this vital emergency route out of Paceville! Nothing, of course, was mentioned regarding the permit for the huge permanent dining platform blocking the same street. Some bright spark is now suggesting the local council should pay for a large pavement to (you guessed it) accommodate dining tables and make it a one-way street up! How
altruistic!
Yesterday, a large crane blocked Spinola Road, making it impossible for traffic to pass through – an example of why Church Street should never have been closed so traffic can go down to Spinola Road and it can act as the “emergency traffic valve”.
The clampdown on Sliema coffee shops suggests a “two weights, two measures” approach by some ministers. Unless, that is, Minister Gatt or the ADT management look upon us law-abiding citizens as “daily moaners”, which is what Stephan Rizzo called us in another newspaper. Undoubtedly, Mr Rizzo suffers with a bad case of the NIMBY syndrome.
As to the closure of the ONLY public car park (Tigullio) in St Julian’s, the ADT maintains that when there is “no major impact on safety or traffic flows”, the local council is allowed to have a free hand – definitely a case of ADT abdicating its responsibilities. What about the remit of ADT to provide parking facilities for the motorist? What about the GRTU’s protection of local bars and restaurants, whose patrons can never find a decent parking spot? Even the Tourism Authority has dissociated itself from these dubious events in Spinola.
Yet, with the stroke of a pen (if that!) this essential car park became an open-air bar with a mega noisy TV screen, as well as a huge mobile advertising billboard, for the best part of five weeks. As this is a
commercial activity, although supposedly a local council event, I ask if a tender was issued for the grant of a public car park to a promoter for most of the summer, for profitable activities, and does this same promotions company get this public site for free? If this was granted then it is nothing but abuse of power benefiting the commercial interests of only one “company”.
Another contradiction in terms is that developers are charged specific fees when they build apartments without garages, the proceeds supposedly going towards the provision of public parking facilities.
The public’s comments and scathing reaction to the ADT’s statement, on various websites, made interesting reading recently and raised some very serious concerns. Hopefully the ADT and its minister took note, but I very much doubt it!
Anthony Cassar
SWIEQI