As the notion of a monorail system for Malta inches closer to possibility, two architecture graduates have stepped forward to present a speculative plan of how such a project might unfold.
Maltarail, the brainchild of young architects Luke Lapira and Justin Zarb, started life as an undergraduate project to design a monorail station before the duo opted to put their idea within context by examining the feasibility of a complete monorail system.
“The problem with current public transport is that it shares the roads with cars. The advantage of an elevated monorail is that it’s grade-separated, meaning it’s not using the same infrastructure,” they said.
“There may be a cheaper way of giving buses some measure of separation but there are limits; you can’t get the same reliability you can with a monorail.”
Monorails have often been touted as a possible solution to Malta’s perennial congestion problems. In December, the government submitted a proposal for EU funding for a 76-kilometre, €1.42 billion project involving mixed overground and underground lines running north-south and east-west. Entrepreneur Anġlu Xuereb recently revised a proposal of his own, first put forward two decades ago, for a €300 million metro system incorporating four main stations, with massive 2,000-vehicle car parks at each.
A map of the proposed monorail system by Luke Lapira and Justin Zarb.Mr Lapira and Mr Zarb’s version envisages a 42-kilometre system made up of eight elevated lines radiating out from a central loop, which runs from Mosta to Blata l-Bajda and back around through Qormi and Marsa. The rest of the lines would connect to Valletta, Sliema, Buġibba, Mdina and the airport, among others.
They said their proposed route was designed to pass mostly through thoroughfares and industrial sites, to minimise visual impact and actively avoided peripheral areas, which could easily have their own transport infrastructure connecting them to the nearest station.
“We also looked at opportunity sites, such as Mrieħel or Smart City, which suffer from poor access and where a monorail offering a rapid link might create further development opportunities.”
Mr Lapira and Mr Zarb are estimating the total cost of the project at €180 million in five phases, each of which can work independently from the rest. A key consideration, they said, was the economic cost of congestion, which, according to estimates by one of their collaborators, amounted to €700 per person per year. This figure, they said, was only likely to get worse as population and affluence increased.
“For people to leave their cars at home, you have to have a system to bring them from their origin to destination with reasonable comfort in reasonable time. So the supporting infrastructure is key. You need a lot of intermodality to make this work.”
Although they have had talks with the Transport Ministry and Transport Malta, they said their main goal was to attract public engagement.
“The whole project is open source. We’ve published everything online, both the thought process and the final product. If there’s going to be a public debate on this, then it has to be informed.”