Rota has said that it believes there is “no need to widen the Marsalforn Road, and instead use other measures to make the road safer, more pleasant and greener.”

The NGO, in a statement on Friday, described the proposed road widening (PA/03000/19) as an “atrocity.”

“We disagree with labelling the road to Marsalforn as `very unsafe for non-motorised transportation.’ While it is true that it needs a good resurface, and adequate lighting, it will become mostly unsafe only once this widening is done,” Rota said.

It claimed that the straighter design “will invite for more speed and create unnecessary conflict, with most bicycle users likely to simply ignore the facility due to its futility, inefficiency and wrong sense of safety involved in jolting in and out of the road several times in one stretch of road.”

Therefore, Rota said that given the very short road (3km) to the sea, “it only makes sense to redesign the road to an actual living street with many traffic calming measures and dieting down the lane widths, which automatically enforces a lower speed limit by design.”It added that lightly segregated bicycle lanes help boost safety, and can be easily attainable by narrowing the oversized road – the opposite of widening by tens of thousands of square metres – and go around the trees where minimal pinch points exist.

Rota stressed that “the trees must remain there as much as possible, and these should be increased ten-fold to make it an enjoyable, shaded boulevard, as sorely needed in the summer months especially.”

The NGO also insisted that “the need for speed on a tiny island like Gozo, should not come before the quality of life and common sense. Gozo’s extremely short distances has a huge potential to become a cycling island. Commuting routes in between most of the villages are not greatly steep either, however pedal-assisted bicycles will solve that anyway.”

Rota concluded by saying, “let’s not repeat the same mistakes over again from past and recent examples. Let’s give attention to Mgarr Road by the harbour instead, as flagged as ‘bad practice’ by the European Cyclists’ Federation.”

Rota.mt is an NGO that “advocates for safer and accessible active mobility on the Maltese Islands.”

The full report with proposals and plans can be read by clicking here.

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