Let's take to the open road

Last November, with so much fanfare that the neighbours reckoned that an election must be in the offing (and this was November LAST year) our Prime Minister ‘opened’ – or more accurately re-opened – the ‘newly surfaced’ St Anthony’s Street in Ghajnsielem.

In this, we thought, he was a bit premature because the job was nowhere near being finished. But he was on Gozo, anyway, and looking for a photo-opportunity, and it meant that he needn’t come back to do it when the job was actually completed.

On this rock we are grateful for anything they throw at us. And it must be said that St Anthony’s – the main road up from the harbour, past the Grand Hotel, to Nadur and Qala, had long been unfit for purpose. The bottom half had fallen off, once, in its entirety, leaving the hotel and the street’s residents with no road in front of them: only a sheer drop to sea-level. And the upper part had rutted, cracked and crumbled through time, weather and over-laden traffic, as most of our roads do.

So it was a job in need of doing.

But – and here’s the thing that would surprise any non-Gozitan – when the PM and the Minister and their hangers-on and the cameramen departed, the workmen left, too.

Now, a year is a short time in Maltese road-building: they have been working (I use the term loosely) on this road’s continuation to Nadur for fully five years. That bit, up the side of the high Nadur plateau, is actually built on stilts. It will need to carry heavy construction equipment and it runs across the planned route for the imaginary Gozo Tunnel, but I expect we’ll reconsider those problems if and when we come to them.

In the meantime we are left with a road surface that, judging by the height of manhole covers and pavement levels, is about four inches too low.

Half the time it isn’t even accessible from the top because it is a junction with the unfinished Nadur hill road.

The part that can be used includes a stretch of pavement that appears surplus to requirements and which reduces the road width by about a third, then ends, suddenly; a pedestrian crossing with only one beacon and no black-and-white road markings; and lumps of concrete dumped in the road that force motorists to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid.

None of this worries the heavy goods vehicles with their big wheels and tyres: as they grind and grunt up the hill with massive rocks or heaps of gravel and then race back down it with what appear to be very similar loads: they can take obstructions in their stride and give way to no man. But the road surface is highly dangerous for drivers of light vehicles and motorcycles.

Need I mention in passing that St Anthony’s Street is classed as being ‘residential’? This despite the weight (literally) and the audible heaving of traffic. In addition to the houses (and the hotel and a couple of decent restaurants) there is a Franciscan convent on the road. There used, I think, to be rules about the weight of traffic going through ancient and residential areas; but then there ‘used to be rules’ about lots of things in Malta.

Of course, in being rutted, cracked and crumbled through time and over-laden traffic, St Anthony’s is no different from many streets in Gozo: they used to be better than Malta’s – because they got less traffic of any sort. I could point to dozens like this (starting, perhaps, with the main road to Marsalforn) that need resurfacing.

The deterioration elsewhere is a relatively recent. It is only in the past two or three years that we have had heavy construction vehicles on so many of our roads.

What makes St Anthony’s a special case is that it carries, non-stop, the weighty vehicles to and from Qala’s quarries.

I keep hearing that there’s no work on Gozo: I also hear that we can’t find people who are willing to work. But the private construction industry obviously doesn’t have any difficulty finding workers, so why doesn’t the Ministry? Why can’t the workmen, who start a job, finish it before being redirected to another one?

And another thing… why don’t the HGVs who churn up the tarmac pay more road tax to compensate for the damage they do? The current deep-pocketed EU roadbuilding subsidy cash-cow is not going to last for ever.

A few optimists (a dying breed on Gozo, these days) shrug and say that the road will probably be ‘nice when it’s finished’. They used to say the same thing about the island when odd bits of construction started.

Just look at the state of the place, now.

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