ITS relocation will generate 6,700 daily trips to Smart City

The relocation of the Institute of Tourism Studies from St George’s Bay to Smart City to the south of the island in Xghajra, will create increased traffic of 6,700 daily trips on average, preliminary studies show.

ITS is earmarked for relocation after the land it stands on was put up for public tender and has since been snapped up by hotelier Silvio Debono’s Seaport Franchising, to develop a Hard Rock hotel that will include two high-rise towers.

At Smart City, the proposed ITS campus will include a 14-storey tower hotel of 135 rooms, apart from the school that will host 2,500 students, government offices, a spa and rooftop pool, and underground parking.

The Environment Resources Authority wants new studies on air quality after learning of the increase in traffic flows as a result of the project. The application was submitted by Projects Malta, the government entity responsible for public-private partnerships.

Transport Malta (TM) is still assessing the planning application for the ITS campus at Smart City.In replies it gave to MaltaToday when asked whether roads leading to Smart City can take the stress of the new traffic, TM said “the proposal falls within the parameters of the original master plan for Smart City… both in terms of uses and floor areas.”

The new campus will be built over an undeveloped area of 11,000 square metres.

TM did not reply to a direct question on whether a road proposed between Bieb is-Sultan to Triq Santu Rokku – first mooted in a planning application in 2007 – is still planned, or whether any other new road will be necessary for a campus of 2,500 students.

In 2010, an environment impact assessment said that a 643 metre dual carriageway linking Zabbar to Kalkara, made necessary by the Smart City project, would come at a massive environmental cost: a loss of 14,500 square metres of agriculture land, the fragmentation of land parcels, the destruction of trees and rubble walls, the risk of development along the new road and a surge in pollution in Fgura.

The road would divert traffic from the historical town centres of Cospicua, Vittoriosa and Kalkara and instead “pump huge amounts of new traffic” into junctions handling traffic from Zabbar and Marsaskala into densely populated Fgura.

A social impact study had also described the new road as a “total disaster” for Fgura residents if the link was not extended to the Tal-Barrani road, and called on the planning authority not to approve the road without such a link.

When it was proposed in 2005, Smart City was envisaged to generate 23,000 daily car trips. But the new road was placed on the backburner when the project entered a slowdown after 2008 – what was marketed as a futuristic IT village that would create 4,000 jobs ended up floundering as the financial crisis hit hard Dubai, where Smart City’s developers Tecom are based.

In 2013, the new Labour government started seeking alternative investments to regenerate the project, which now include the seven-storey John Paul II private hospital as well as the new ITS campus.

Many of the students at ITS work in nearby hotels in St George’s Bay and may have a problem shuttling to and from Xghajra’s new campus, which is why the development of a hotel as part of the project could offer new job opportunities and minimise traffic impact.