The northbound carriageway of the Marsa-Ħamrun bypass will be closed all day on October 20 for asphalt laying works as part of the road’s €5 million upgrade.

Weather permitting, all lanes from the Marsa-Qormi flyover bridge to the Mrieħel bypass slip road and the Santa Venera tunnels will be closed early on Saturday at 2am to lay the first of the two topmost layers of this new road, using 1,020 tonnes of asphalt to cover a 5,100 metres squared area. The road will reopen in the evening.

Road users were encouraged to use alternative routes through Marsa and Msida (Triq Diċembru 13), or from Luqa and Qormi, when travelling from the south towards the central and northern parts of the island.

The two-lane slip road linking Triq Diċembru 13’s northbound carriageway to the Marsa-Ħamrun Bypass will also be closed and road users travelling in this direction will be diverted towards Msida and Valletta.

Police and Transport Malta traffic management officers will be stationed in the area and along alternative routes to guide road users in difficulty.

Transport Malta’s emergency vehicle breakdown towing service will be available at all times. Road users can call the emergency support line 8007 3399 to request this assistance.

The same carriageway will be closed again on October 22, between 7pm and 5am on October 23, to apply the topmost asphalt layer. The works, scheduled to take place last Saturday, had to be postponed due to bad weather.

Through a €5 million project launched earlier this year, the Marsa-Ħamrun Bypass was widened to a six-lane road to improve the safety and efficiency of the junctions and slip roads connected to it, eliminating several bottlenecks that caused delays to road users travelling along this south-central route. This investment is reducing the road’s travelling times by 42%, while improving the area’s air quality by decreasing congestion emissions.

The project, which may be part-financed by the European Union’s Cohesion Fund, is scheduled to be completed in April 2019. However, the new and rebuilt lanes were made available to road users last September. Infrastructure Malta is planning to complete the final works in the coming weeks, several months ahead of schedule.

The upgrading and widening of the Marsa-Ħamrun Bypass also forms part of the €17 million road upgrades implemented by Infrastructure Malta in summer 2018, taking advantage of the seasonal drop in road use to improve the capacity, efficiency and safety of some of the country’s busiest routes.

Between July and September, the newly-formed agency optimised the resources allocated for the planning and implementation of new and ongoing infrastructural projects, including the Marsa-Ħamrun Bypass project, to push forward the introduction of several improvements.

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