Updated 5.30pm

Planning officials should consider scrapping proposals for a massive road works project in Attard and push for an elevated bypass to be built in the area instead, the Democratic Party said on Sunday.

In a statement, the PD said that the deadline for objections concerning the Central Link project would close on Monday. It urged the the PA to waste no time in assessing the proposal and objections to it. 

PA officials, the party said, could either accept the plans as they were proposed but require amendments to “make the proposed principal streets liveable”, or else they could send authorities back to the drawing board and ask them to design an  elevated bypass route.

An elevated bypass, the PD argued, would cut the amount of agricultural land that would be sacrificed for the project and reduce pollution effects on residents in the area.

The PD expressed concerns about the paucity of information about pedestrian crossings in submitted plans, and said that a pedestrian bridge being proposed for Mdina Road at the San Anton gardens junction was “monstrous” and made little sense from an urban planning perspective.

It also criticised the way cycling lanes had been laid out in Central Link project plans, saying they were scattered, poorly connected to each other and not on the side where people actually live.

“This is unthinkable,” the party said.

The €55m Central Link project plans, which have already undergone one set of revisions following criticism, face staunch resistance from a number of Attard residents and the town’s local council. Others, led by the Malta Automobile Club, have signed a petition calling for the project to go ahead as planned.