Drive for more durable roads

Transport Minister Censu Galea yesterday spoke of the need to introduce new road construction methods and import better materials in order to build more durable roads, even though their cost would rise.

Even the way road markings were made needed to change, he said in an interview.

"New methods will be more expensive but the results would last much longer.

"We also have to move away from current practices of painting signs that last a few weeks at most. But there is a price for everything."

Mr Galea said one of the biggest problems in roadbuilding was that neither the government nor the contractors knew how to build roads that could withstand the volume and weight of today's vehicles.

"The previous administration had laid the foundations which has enabled us to have architects who specialise in road works. We have 14 of them and they are now reading a second degree in the subject," he said.

Plans were also afoot to introduce courses at MCAST giving specific training to roadworkers.

The minister said German experts had been instrumental in teaching contractors how to lay road foundations and use compacting techniques, which made roads last much longer.

Inspections took place at regular intervals to ensure that standards were adhered to at all stages of roadbuilding, Mr Galea said.

Contractors now also knew more about the proper mix needed to have better quality tarmac. The problem was that the aggregate extracted locally was not hard enough and the surface layer wore away much more quickly because of this, hence the need for more durable aggregate, he said.

Asked why road works took so long, Mr Galea said: "The criticism that road works take long is justified in many cases. Both the contractors and the government are in a learning process. Most of this criticism is levelled about roads which are heavily used, and I can understand that."

The biggest delay was in the Burmarrad road, which should have been finished within a year.

"The road is practically ready now, some eight months behind schedule. When tender specifications were issued, it was not known that the service ducts, which are part of the road works, would take so much time to be built. As I said, trained personnel were lacking," he said.

Another aspect which caused delays was the fact that the road was not closed for traffic when roadworks were taking place, and thus the pace of work was not as fast as it could have been.

"Contractors are also being bound to guarantee works for five years. There were many cases when they were asked to undo what they had done and redo it at their own expense to ensure it was done well," he said.

Mr Galea said there were nine contractors who between them employed some 400 people. They were very well equipped but their personnel needed to be re-trained in certain skills.

He said the government was spending about Lm8 million a year on roads and another Lm10 million had been spent by local councils over the past four years.

The Lm26 million from the Italian protocol and from EU accession funds would be used to redo the roads that were badly built in the 1980s.

"By 2006, Malta would have redone all the arterial roads that need attention. Without this Lm26 million, it would have taken us eight years to do up these roads," Mr Galea said.

Asked whether the government was patching up or resurfacing more roads because the election was approaching, Mr Galea said all works in hand had started before the election was announced.

"No new tenders have been issued since the election was called. I have been resisting pressure to resurface roads with a few centimetres of tarmac and do not want to lose the work we have done in these few weeks.

"We can resurface most of Malta if we spend just Lm2 million, but that would literally be a whitewash. It often happened in the past, but we do not want to do that. It is a real waste of money as those roads last just a few weeks," he said.