Plan for road-widening to link Paceville tunnel, but unavailable to public

Pembroke and St Julian’s are next in line for a major makeover of the road infrastructure network, in the absence of which major high-rise developments planned or taking place in the area would develop nightmarish gridlocks on Maltese roads.

The details and plans connected to the new application (6089/19), presented a month ago, are still not available to the public as the application is still deemed to be “incomplete” – terminology employed by the Planning Authority to justify its obscuration on its geoserver website.

Only the site area of the new network is identified on the geoserver map, where users can check pending applications presented on any particular site in Malta and Gozo.

The information, limited to the delineation of the land impacted by the application, does not indicate which parts of the application will be underground, constructed on elevated levels or if they would require the widening of existing surface roads.

The use of underground tunnels and elevations could minimise the impact on sensitive locations like the Harq il-Hammiem valley, included in the site area of the application.

The plans also coincide with the route of an underground tunnel presented during the processing of the DB group’s 38-storey tower in Pembroke.

This involves a new route starting at the junction between Triq Sant Andrija and Triq Suffolk, partly on land once identified for the development of a Chinese embassy in 2012, passing right under the Natura 2000 garigue area along Triq il-Mediterran, and continuing all the way to St George’s Bay.

The approval of the DB tower in the absence of a transport infrastructure plan was one of the most contentious aspects of the project, which was expected to generate a demand for 7,000 new car trips.

The permit was recently revoked by the law courts due to the conflict of interest of one of the PA board members which approved it – Matthew Pace, a REMAX affiliate owner who has since resigned the government appointment – but the developers have presented a new application to excavate the site earmarked for the project.  

But the area coinciding with the tunnel plans linking Pembroke to the DB project is only a part of the latest application, which also foresees extensive roadworks along Triq Sant Andrija from the roundabout opposite the White Rocks complex, to the proposed tunnel junction.

The roadworks will encroach on an afforested area near the Pembroke military cemetery and Saint Clare’s secondary school.

Roadworks will continue right down to the junction with the Mikiel Anton Vassalli regional road.

Images show the new road network emerging at St George’s Bay and near Spinola Bay, close to Portomaso

The new network will be linked to the park-and-ride near the former Raffles disco. Extensive works are also proposed along Triq il-Professur Walter Ganado which will be linked to Triq Sant Andrija. This link will pass through a part of the protected Harq il-Hammiem valley.

Works are also foreseen along the whole stretch of the regional road, starting from the bridge along Wied il-Kalci (where a 25-storey hotel has been recently proposed, right before the regional road tunnels) in the intersection with Triq il-Baltiku, up to to the junction with Triq Sant Andrija and then up to the Paceville church near Portomaso.

These plans coincide with a proposal made in the Paceville masterplan which foresaw a new 732m tunnel passing under Triq Mikiel Anton Vassallo. The €32 million tunnel was meant to divert traffic away from the road surface to reduce congestion beyond the St Andrew’s park-and-ride in the northern and southern junction between Triq Mikiel Ang Borg and Triq Mikiel Anton Vassalli.

The cost of another 1.4km tunnel linking Pembroke to the DB project is as yet unknown. In 2018, the government had not yet taken any decision with regard to the funding of the proposed tunnel before the approval of the DB project. It is still not known whether developers benefitting from it will be expected to contribute to the expense. But the contract through which the land was transferred to the DB Group states clearly that the government has to “undertake at its sole cost, risk, legal and financial liability” the “required improvements to the road and utilities infrastructure leading to the site”.

According to transport studies linked to the DB project, the proposed tunnel will produce a staggering 100,000 cubic metres of construction waste – half of which may be reusable in the tunnel structure itself.

A total of 14,000 trips were envisaged throughout excavation phase in order to transport this material offsite. This would amount to between 50 and 80 trips a day.

Although the tunnel will be excavated under a Natura 2000 site, preliminary reports indicated that no habitat loss or damage is expected since the excavation work will be underground.

Detecting ghost applications

Since May 2019, the PA stopped the publication of plans related to a large number of applications deemed to be “incomplete”.

But the PA’s interactive map of Malta and Gozo, where users click to check the details of applications when presented on any particular site – still shows the location of these “ghost” applications.

MaltaToday screens applications on a daily basis and lists all applications, which are listed as incomplete for future reference. These are then cross-referenced with the PA’s geo-server.

In this way MaltaToday is keeping a track of ghost applications to keep the public informed despite the information blackout. The PA has indicated that details of applications on major projects will only be made publically available by the Environment and Resources Authority at the start of the Environment Impact Assessment process which often commences months after an application is presented.

The formal public consultation by the PA itself will only start after the completion of the EIA.

This would mean that plans and comments by public authorities like the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage, submitted along the process may not be available during the initial phase of the project.

This is because only when an application is deemed “complete” can the public access plans and any representation made during the process. Before May the public had full access to these plans from the very beginning of the application process.