Sliema council has finalised a new traffic management plan aimed at increasing parking spaces and reducing congestion on the town’s roads.
The council will start by reducing the size of parking bays, some of which are larger than the legal size, hoping to create an extra two parking spaces in each of Sliema’s 120 streets and also add more bays for motorcycles.
The parking bay exercise will start tomorrow, when the council will measure and repaint them, according to Sliema deputy mayor Silvio Zammit who is responsible for traffic management.
“We are aware of the parking problems in Sliema and we are doing our best to alleviate it, especially for residents and the business community,” he said.
Asked about a residents’ parking scheme that had been proposed by the previous council, Mr Zammit said this would still remain the final target, though studies would be carried out to find the best way to go about it.
Mr Zammit said the council will be inspecting and verifying the yellow reserved parking spaces. There are some 140 reserved parking bays around Sliema, some of which do not even belong to the people who applied for them.
“We are proposing that each reserved parking bay will be marked with the car’s registration plate because there is a lot of abuse,” he said.
To create more parking spaces, the council has applied for a permit to introduce 15 parking spaces on Tower Road, between the former Joinwell showroom and Pjazzetta and another five across the road, behind the green kiosk before turning down to Qui-si-Sana.
The council is also looking at the ‘no parking’ zones granted during construction projects and remained barred for cars after the works were done. In Tigné, for example, around 10 extra parking spaces can be reclaimed.
Mr Zammit said the council was also proposing a reorganisation of the streets in Tigné, some of which became main roads when the tunnel was being constructed.
Now that the tunnel is open, a one-way system will be introduced in some roads.
The deputy mayor said the council also planned to eliminate sleeping policemen, replacing them instead with proper road markings and signs – studies in the UK showed these were more effective.
Mr Zammit said George Borg Olivier Street – which hosts Saint James Capua Hospital – would become one-way down from High Street while Amery Street will become one-way up to High Street. This, he said, would reduce congestion.
Moreover, the council is looking into how to enforce a ban on heavy vehicles passing through Old College Street due to the deteriorating state of the bridge over Manuel Dimech Street.
To reduce traffic congestion in Mrabat Street, in the bottleneck near the former Belmont Hotel, the council intends to install traffic lights which bus drivers would be able to control.
mxuereb@timesofmalta.com