A metro proposal unveiled last week would cause more harm than good, Malta’s green party has said.
The ADPD said that it was unclear why consultants hired to draft the plan had opted for a fully underground mass transit system, which would generate huge amounts of waste and threaten Malta’s cultural heritage.
Other systems could be built far quicker and at less financial and environmental cost, the party said.
Until the government published the consultants’ detailed studies, a call for public consultation on the metro project would be a waste of time, it said.
The government unveiled a proposal for a three-line, 35km metro system last week, saying the proposal would require roughly €6 billion and 15 to 20 years to complete.
The proposal was welcomed in general terms by the Nationalist Party opposition, which noted that it had first proposed building a metro beneath Malta in the run-up to the 2017 general election.
But Malta’s green party remains sceptical of the plans. In a press conference on Saturday, ADPD chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said that the proposal “creates too many environmental problems and is a threat to both existing public spaces and our historical heritage”.
Alternatives such as : Bus Rapid Transit, overland tram and an elevated metro were all discarded with little explanation, he said, raising the prospect of land reclamation becoming a reality, in order to use the huge amounts of waste that tunnel boring would generate.
“We hope that after ruin on land as a result of overdevelopment, it is now not the turn of our marine environment to be ruined, using the Metro as an excuse,” he said.
ADPD deputy chairperson Mario Mallia emphasised the need for local and regional transport to be beefed up if any mass transit system is to work.
He used Birkirkara as an example, saying such transport was very weak in the locality and that bicycle racks that he had introduced during his time as a local councillor in the time had now mostly been removed.
The ADPD said that any transport solution had to seek to reduce the number of cars on roads without doing damage to Malta’s cultural heritage. Digging metro tunnels in culturally and ecologically sensitive sites would risk doing that.
“The choice which will be eventually made should not only reduce cars from our roads: it should do this with the minimum of environmental impacts and in full respect of our historical and ecological heritage,” the party said.