Four months after the €14.7 million upgrade of the Kirkop, Santa Venera, Tal-Qroqq and Ta’ Giorni tunnels was completed, Infrastructure Malta is still “fine-tuning” the intelligent lighting system that has been criticised for being excessively bright – day and night.
Industry sources, who specialise in lighting, said the brightness in the tunnels should drop by about 60 per cent at night, compared to the daytime intensity. However, at the moment, the four tunnels’ lighting intensity remains the same throughout.
When asked for a reaction, a spokesman for Infrastructure Malta said: “The intelligent lighting system has been installed. The contractor is currently carrying out the final testing and fine-tuning for the whole system.”
The same industry sources said that calibrating the system would normally take a few days but, in this case, four months had passed since the tunnels were declared complete, pending minor works, at the end of June.
They added that the tunnels used way too many cables than would be normally necessary for an intelligent lighting system, describing the system as a “spaghettata” and a “wire jungle”.
As part of the renovation works on the tunnels, which started in August 2020, the old lighting system was upgraded to high-powered LED lights.
“Works included intelligent lighting systems, which alter their intensity at different parts of the tunnel and at different times of day to improve drivers’ visibility, as well as security cameras and air quality sensors,” Infrastructure Malta had said at the time.
Given that the lighting system is not yet “intelligent”, it triggered a barrage of social media comments over the past months because of the strong intensity of the lights, especially at night.
People described the light as “blinding” and memes likened the brightness to that emitted by a nuclear bomb or the light one would expect to see when passing on to the afterlife.
Figures obtained by Times of Malta from Infrastructure Malta showed that the tunnels – originally quoted to cost €10 million in July – ended up costing €14.7 million, “excluding VAT”. Each of the four tunnels cost about €3.7 million.
The bulk of the total cost – €4.5 million – went on structural works and special structures while €4.3 million was spent on lighting and communications.
Pavement works cost €1.8 million while service utilities and fire-fighting systems cost €1.4 million. An additional €1 million went to “other works”, the sealing of cracks cost just over €800,000 while painting and plastering cost some €675,000.
On Monday, Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi said that contracts for the bulk of the works were handed out by direct order.
The claims were denied by Infrastructure Malta that said: “Three open calls for tenders were published followed by a negotiated procedure... therefore, it is not true that most work has been allocated by direct order.
“The same contractor was successful in the three procedures and all works were carried out by this contractor. All works were carried out by the same contractor – BIFRA JV.”
Photos Chris Sant Fournier..