Considering that he’s a confirmed advocate of undersea tunnels, Elvind Grøv, who addressed a packed-to-overflowing public meeting at the Grand Hotel in Gozo last week, doesn’t pull any punches.
For example, he described the problems – not mentioned in this newspaper’s report on Saturday – of corrosion from constantly dripping salt water and exhaust emissions. (Excess water would be drained and exhaust fumes pumped out… except, presumably, during power cuts.)
Traffic accidents in three-lane tunnels – “head-on collisions, nose-to-tail shunts, motorists driving into the tunnel walls and cars catching fire” – apparently occur with roughly the same frequency as on surface roads… except that the system under the sea is one of “self-preservation”. Apparently if you have a crash, you’re on your own. There are no escape routes. Motorists could be warned on the radio when the tunnel is closed because of an accident, he said.
Oh, and in a similar development in Iceland, the ferry service was closed after the tunnel opened.
It emerged following the discussion that the most likely site for the tunnel entrance on the north side would be at Ħondoq, for it needed to be “as close as possible to sea level”.
The fact that there’s not much of a road to that bay, nor even a decent road into Qala, is something that – with an obviously unlimited budget – could be overcome. Still, it could put an end to the debate about what to do with the place.
What was remarkable at Prof. Grøv’s lecture was not the number of Gozitans who attended but the number of Maltese contractors, all desperate for a share of the cake.
Introducing him in Maltese, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said had referred to the various possibilities for funding a tunnel between Gozo and Malta; he didn’t refer to this in his translation into English – the language most likely to be spoken by the people who would be footing the bill.
But one contractor, who lives in the south of Malta, told me afterwards that where the money came from would be “irrelevant”. If a tunnel were built, he might even come over to the north island for lunch.
Yes – him and a few hundred safari jeeps; all that’s needed, presumably, to rescue Gozo’s floundering economy.
The consensus appears to be that, if a tunnel is what Gozo wants, a tunnel is what it will get.
The unasked question (it was a “technical” meeting, rather than a political or economic one) was whether it’s the Gozitans who want it, or the Maltese contractors.
The professor thought that it might take “five or 10 years” to build a tunnel.
Nobody had told him how long it’s taken, so far, to build merely a terminal at Ċirkewwa!