The Santa Lucija roundabout will result in the destruction of an existing 1km stretch of mature trees and loss of agricultural land to widen traffic carriage-ways for private transit but exclude adequate bicycle lanes and pedestrianized paths.
The unsustainablity of this decision is proven by NATIONAL TRANSPORT STRATEGY 2050 issued by Transport Malta itself, which says that;
“The trends of increasing car ownership and the inability for supply to continue meeting travel demands by private transport at its growing rate, is resulting in ever increasing levels of congestion. Experience has shown that such trends only contribute to a transportation system whose future growth is unsustainable.”
Authorities are taking decisions with total disregard for the plans and policies aimed at supporting sustainable development that they themselves have put in place.
In August, the ERA had claimed “that environmental impacts from the development are unlikely to be significant” then recommended that an “Environmental Impact Assessment is not required.”
FAA questions how the Authority responsible for the protection of our environment can deem such an unsustainable damaging application as one to have little impact?
Our institutions are failing us by simply encouraging further car-use and placing the burden of dealing with the inevitable build-up of road congestion on future generations.
FAA
