The Streets Project was launched in October in Vittoria, Sicily. STreets (STRatEgia IntEgrata per un Trasporto Sostenibile_Italia-Malta) is a three-year project partly financed by the European Union European Regional Development Fund under the Operational Programme Italia-Malta 2007-2013.

The project aims to improve the accessibility to both islands, while overcoming the current bottlenecks identified between the two islands. Streets involves six partners, with the leading partner being the Regione Sicilia (Dipartimento Regionale delle infrastrutture, della mobilità e dei trasporti), together with Collegio Universitario Arces, Vittoria local council, Catania Port Authority, Transport Malta and the University of Malta’s Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development.

The Institute is responsible for a number of tasks which include an analysis of the territory and the traffic flows in and out of the port areas of ??Catania and Malta; the proposal of a draft joint strategy to determine current territorial problems; the identification of intermodal means of transport within the Sicilian-Maltese environment; an analysis of passengers and goods flows between Malta and Sicily and the promotion of an integrated and sustainable transport solution.

The Streets launch conference took place in Vittoria with all project partners discussing progress so far. The University of Malta was represented by Dr Maria Attard (project coordinator), Ing. Luana Chetcuti Zammit, Nicolette Formosa and Deborah Mifsud (project research officers) and Boglarka Toth (project administrator).

At the conference Dr Attard presented the work being carried out in the development of a digital map of the transport network and the survey results gathered so far on the flow of passengers by air to and from Catania and Trapani.