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Karl Schembri
Resistance to the government’s park and ride proposals is mounting from diverse quarters, from Valletta hawkers to the Union Haddiema Maghqudin, in what is turning out to be a surprise chorus of disapproval for Investments Minister Austin Gatt, who is steering the project.
Opposition to the project is fuelled by varied interests but what seems to unite the most vociferous sceptics is the lack of consultation, even though the Cabinet committee steering the plans sent a questionnaire and solicited the views of NGOs and local councils before publishing its consultation document.
UHM Secretary General Gejtu Vella is the latest voice against the plans, slamming the government for starting the park and ride infrastructural project in Blata l-Bajda when consultation was still supposed to be going on.
“What kind of consultation is this?” he said in a press conference last Wednesday.
Gatt may have unleashed more resistance than he ever expected, with one of the two local councils earmarked for the park and ride strategy, Floriana, totally opting out of the CCTV system that would charge cars entering the locality.
And yesterday, Labour leader Alfred Sant said the plans will not lessen traffic congestion in the capital city.
“To the contrary, traffic will increase not only in Valletta but also in the localities surrounding it,” Sant said. “The most crucial thing would be to improve public transport substantially, but government has no idea of how to do that.
Floriana mayor Publius Agius has turned his guns back on to the Cabinet committee, and his own councillors, after he was accused by his council colleagues of acting on his own in the consultation process.
Speaking to MaltaToday, he referred to memos ignored by Floriana councillors and council meetings in which the park and ride strategy had to be discussed but kept being postponed to later dates. Also, he says, he solicited the councillors’ reactions to a questionnaire sent by the Cabinet committee but none were forthcoming.
“It’s unfair of the councillors to say I acted on my own, when they never bothered to take a stand before the plans were made public,” he said. “They called five council meetings but they never discussed the park and ride scheme, even though it was on the agenda.”
But he also slammed the Cabinet committee for omitting his own feedback in the questionnaire, including the residents’ concerns, particularly the elderly, to have their relatives visiting them park for free.
Agius also points out that while he had indicated he would agree with a CCTV system, he still put short-stay parking high among the council’s priorities as a practical system that has already worked for the locality in a couple of roads.
“Extending this system to more roads in Floriana would benefit residents,” he said.
On the other hand, charging less in Floriana for parking than in Valletta, as government is proposing, would increase parking problems in the locality as workers commuting to the capital would prefer to park in the suburb for less, Agius said.
Last week, the chairman of the government committee in charge of the park and ride scheme said: “Leaving Floriana out of the scheme makes little real difference to the project in Valletta. It is likely to make a substantial difference to Floriana itself however. As the council itself predicts, Floriana would itself become the ‘park and ride’ site for people wanting to go to Valletta.”
karl@newsworksltd.com
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