Dock 1 agreement soon

Agreement on a good financial package for the Dock 1 project was close and the consortium would soon be able to submit an outline application, Roads and Urban Development Minister Jesmond Mugliett said yesterday.

Mr Mugliett told Parliament that significant steps on the project had been made in summer. Mr Mugliett said the ministry was capable of absorbing the funds at its disposal. Replying to comments by Opposition spokesman Charles Buhagiar, he said no EU funds would be lost.

Projects funded by EU Structural Funds - the Hal Far Road, the road at San Lawrenz and the Manoel Dimech bridge, would be finished this year. The government had a programme with the EU and in a number of projects it could overlap the funds into next year. The Manoel Dimech bridge project, for example, could be completed by November 2007.

Mr Mugliett said the government had launched three particular projects this year- the Cottonera landscaping project which cost Lm400,000, the Park and Ride project which was to start on Monday and which cost Lm700,000 and, together with the Committee for National Projects, the Valletta Vehicle Control project.

The ADT, the minister said, had evolved into a body which implemented projects.

While the roads budget had tripled, it was only recently that the number of architects had been increased.

Two new projects allocated to the ministry this year were those of the Ta' Qali Crafts Village and the Convention Centre. It also continued to work on the Schreiber Ground, Connections and Dock 1 projects.

And although St Elmo had originally been a priority it could not be actively followed because of work on other projects. There was a limit to how many projects a country could work on at the same time.

Sometimes projects could not be launched for financial reasons, lack of feasibility or lack of consensus, as had been the case with the former Opera House site and City Gate. But the government was working on several projects at Valletta, so it was first letting these mature and it would turn to the Opera House and City Gate at a later stage.

In Valletta, the cruise passenger terminal project was at an advanced stage, and it was true that there were accessibility problems.

The place had generated cultural activity, it was generating business and it was also successful at its core business. There were 320 visits by cruise liners this year and 350 were planned next year. The project was still not completed, and 312 additional parking spaces would eventually be organised.

He said that the Viset road was a priority among the roads to be financed by the EU in the next stage, the first tenders for which were to be issued by the end of this year. This project was chosen as a priority because the government was trying to unite all projects related to accessibility to Valletta.

One such project was the Park and Ride, which was an alternative way of getting to Valletta. This had evolved to ultimately provide a choice for whoever needed to go to Valletta: either park free at Crown Works Ditch and ride into Valletta, or pay to park in certain parts of the city where paid parking would still be allowed. Earlier concepts had been perceived to be too heavy on whoever wanted to drive into the city, and payment all over would have been counter-productive.

The mini-buses and shuttle cars to be used in the project, especially the former, were only a temporary measure. Eventually the government would look again at some other, possibly cleaner, form of transport. The project had also revamped the dilapidated zone at Crown Works Ditch.

Another project was that of controlling entry into Valletta, the main aim of which was to do away with illegal parking in the city.

It was hoped that the new-look Valletta would incentivate shoppers and improve accessibility to residents.

The minister said that a call for proposals for a lift from Lascaris Ditch, providing vertical access to Valletta, was to be issued this month.

This would also connect the ditch to the cruise liner passenger terminal with a funicular railway.

The call for proposals, the minister said, was currently being drafted. A feasibility study had been made and the project would maximise parking in the ditch, besides serving as an attraction.

When a cable car project had been requested, the minister said, the government considered it but saw that it would have a negative impact as proposed, so it was not accepted.

However, it took the opportunity to take a new look at the lift project and came up with new ideas.

A tender for electric taxis to operate in and around Valletta had also been issued.

Replying to Mr Buhagiar's comments on capital projects, Mr Mugliett said developers themselves sometimes came up with new ideas that took time to study. One case in point was Midi's proposal to install a subsidiary company in the shopping mall at Tigné, with the legal implications it involved. Another proposal regarding Manoel Island was the relocation of the Royal Malta Yacht Club to another side of the island, which depended on a decision by Mepa because the relocation was not on the original masterplan.

The link between Manoel Island and Kappara was indeed a government obligation that would probably be taken in hand sometime in 2008 when work on Manoel Island progressed sufficiently, but not before completion of the Kappara roundabout project.

After giving a general overview of all the roads completed since 2000, Mr Mugliett said that between the year 2000 and 2006 a total of 32 kilometres of arterial roads, 23.6 per cent of the road network in Malta, had been done.

At the same time, preparation for future works had also been undertaken. In fact, including funds from the EU and the national budget, Lm21 million were being voted for road projects.

Time frames were generally being kept but in certain areas, particularly in traffic management there was still room for improvement.

Since 2003 the government had financed around 380 residential roads but 450 were still to be done. Tenders had been issued for 90 of them. The target was to complete the programme by the end of 2008.

Nationalist MP Mario Galea said that the opposition was criticising the government that the old Opera House project had not yet materialised, but it had forgotten all about the kilometres of roads which had been constructed.

He said it was strange how some people working with horsedrawn carriages did not have a licence while others who had neither horse nor carriage did. These were negotiating their licence and getting paid for someone to use it. Why did the number of horsedrawn carriages have to be controlled by the government or the Malta Transport Authority (ADT)? Did the government think that thousands would apply if it opened up the sector? The fact that there was a limited number of licences was creating a racket. One solution could be to give those who did not have a licence a chance to regularise their position.

Mr Galea said that the process had been started for a tender to be issued for open-top buses. But was it the ADT's role to issue tenders? Its role should be to issue licences and set up standards and give operators a free hand. They would be much more expensive to use than normal buses, so they would not be taking the latter's market.

It would have been better had the ADT imposed conditions and left it up to operators to seek work themselves. And what stage was the process in? There was a commitment from both the Prime Minister and Mr Mugliett that a solution would be found. He hoped that no one in the ADT was putting spokes in the wheels.

Replying, Minister Mugliett said the country could not have an open market in all sectors of transport. The ADT saw that the potential of such vehicles was in tourism and issued calls in the sector.

Continuing, Mr Galea said that a new coach cost Lm120,000. A second-hand one cost Lm60,000 to Lm65,000 but there was still a registration tax of Lm8,000 to Lm9,000 to be paid. Could those wanting to replace their coaches with second-hand ones be exempted from paying the registration tax or part of it, especially when this was not paid on concrete mixers, cranes or road mixers, for example? This was an anomaly which had to be addressed, he concluded.

Nationalist MP Joe Falzon said both the Italian protocol and the EU funding had come in very useful for the Maltese to finally start seeing long-needed roadworks. The deficiencies of old road-laying systems became readily obvious when 20-year-old roads were taken up for re-laying.

The negative impact of a number of residential roads all over the island that had never been laid or were due for re-laying was partly due to redevelopment of certain built-up areas. A construction management plan should by drawn up by or with Mepa to address these problems.

How could a contractor be allowed to move in a tower crane, for example, and leave it there for months on end, if not years? This often resulted in serious damage to that part of the road. Local councils should be urged to do their own part in controlling such situations.

Urban development was bringing new needs to bear on the underground infrastructure, sometimes with great servicing problems. This called for a greater level of coordination among various quarters. Sometimes this necessitated that although a road was residential, it should be laid more strongly because of the heavy traffic anticipated to go through it.

Roadworks undoubtedly brought with them inconvenience and dusty fall-out, but the end result was invariably worth the sacrifice, concluded Mr Falzon.