The Msida flyover

So we’re getting another flyover, this time cutting through the heart of Msida. The 3D renderings look pretty cool but I couldn’t find the one showing the gigantic grey columns that will rise above the picturesque canals and walkways.

Worse still, the designers seem to have forgotten about pedestrians and cyclists. They think that people only walk and bike for leisure, so they have positioned a bicycle lane and pavement around the canal, not on the streets where they actually lead to essential places like homes, shops, offices and schools.

Plans for the Msida Creek flyover. Photo: Infrastructure Malta

I thought we were moving away from infrastructure centred around the car. But, once again, the priority seems to be that of making cars move faster, even if it means segregating pedestrians and cyclists to places that aren’t practically connected to anything.

The other thing is that these flyover projects solve nothing in the long run.

Eventually, traffic will catch up, as it has done in Marsa, just a couple of years after that project was completed. You would think that everyone would have by now realised that traffic is here to stay, irrespective of all these very impressive road projects. The bigger problem is that we have all but run out of space to expand them. That’s unless we want to start demolishing neighbourhoods and cutting through natural reserves.

A couple of years ago, the government floated the idea of a metro system as a potential remedy to our traffic woes. I too was all for a rail system and wrote about it back in 2011. 

We haven’t heard a thing about this project since 2021 in spite of all the fanfare and exciting visuals. But that’s probably a good thing. 

A metro system would take decades to build and cost billions. It will also turn Malta into an even bigger, noisier and dustier construction site than it already is. That’s a huge price to pay for something that won’t even solve everything – because, in its infancy, a metro network would only have a handful of stations, meaning that commuters would still need to use other forms of transport to get to the station as well as reach their final destination.

So let’s work on the obvious solution: embracing bicycles and e-scooters, which, despite being the target of a lot of hate, continue to see an uptick in users. The demand is there notwithstanding the dangers, lack of dedicated infrastructure and,  sometimes, utter contempt shown towards them. The infrastructure needed to accommodate them would cost a mere fraction of what it would cost to build a metro system, or even a flyover, and the results would be both immense and immediate.

Tens of people already use them. Now imagine what would happen if we actually made it safe, easy and convenient.

Bicycle lanes demand relatively little space and can be integrated seamlessly into existing infrastructure, enhancing connectivity without any environmental degradation. They are aligned with our green aspirations and would, in the long-run, lead to a more sustainable urban environment.

The government’s promise to build 50-60km of cycle routes shows that there is, at least, some political will to promote these modes of transport.

And, yet, what we got is the Msida flyover project, an ugly traffic junction where bicycle lanes are thrown in as an afterthought.

Andrew Saliba  – Marsascala