Government warning to Floriana council

Should the Floriana council implement a parking scheme without the Malta Transport Authority's approval, the government would have no alternative but to apply all the necessary enforcement measures as it did with other councils that went down this road in the past, the government said yesterday.

The council has proposed the setting up of a residents' parking scheme which would restrict the length of time non-residents are allowed to park on certain residential streets. Last week, mayor Publius Agius threatened to press ahead with the scheme even if the ADT turned it down and gave the authority a week to reply. He said the ADT's failure to reply to the proposal so far was being seen as retaliation for the council's lack of participation in discussions on the controlled vehicle access for Valletta and Floriana.

In a statement, the government said the proposals were being technically assessed by the ADT through the normal procedure.

The council's statement that only 16 per cent of all parking spaces in Floriana would be included in the scheme was misleading, it claimed, since the figure also took into account the parking spaces available in the open parking lots just outside Valletta, which could not be considered to be within a residential area.

The criticism levelled by the council regarding the lack of consultation over the "change of settings to the Floriana pelican lights" was also surprising.

It was not true that "people end up waiting for 10 minutes to cross from one side of St Anne Street to another". Waiting times for pedestrians at both the pelican lights on St Anne Street and the new synchronised traffic light pedestrian facilities provided near the Lion fountain were no longer than a minute throughout the day and night.

The only exception to this was the morning peak period till 9.30 a.m. when pedestrian waiting times were extended to around two minutes to ensure a smooth flow of the heavy volume of traffic entering Valletta and Floriana.

The government said the Floriana council will go down as the only body which has criticised the Park and Ride.

It was misleading to state that Park and Ride was having an adverse effect on Floriana residents, particularly when considering that the primary aim of the project was specifically to reduce the number of car trips to Floriana and Valletta.

In a statement earlier yesterday, the Floriana council called on the authorities to better control the traffic lights in St Anne Street, especially in the mornings, claiming that because they were taking a long time to change, people were crossing on red.

It said the council was also receiving a lot of complaints that the transport between Park and Ride and Valletta was not stopping at Floriana, as had been announced when the system was launched.

As a result people who worked in Floriana were alighting in Valletta. The council said it had insisted there should be a stop in Floriana from the very beginning.