A 10-YEAR MASTER PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENTS TO VALLETTA AND FLORIANA Regenerating our Renaissance capital I would like to congratulate the Planning Authority for its document, A Strategy for Valletta. This places an excellent context for the subject of this comprehensive document which I am hereby submitting to contribute to the important public debate that needs to be generated on how best to regenerate our Renaissance capital city, Valletta. I have been writing about the need for a holistic master plan for Valletta for over 25 years. In fact, in the first article I wrote, published in The Sunday Times on 29 October, 1989, I suggested a master plan for the capital city. Many of my suggestions have been implemented; others have not. Among the subjects that I raised were public transport, parking and pedestrianisation (this at a time when Republic Street was open to vehicular traffic). Buses operating on a circular route have not been implemented. The maritime link from Sliema to Valletta to Cottonera has been implemented. The park and ride in the Horn Works Ditch has been implemented; the underground link to the railway tunnel has not. But the tunnel is still there (more on this in this document). There were also suggestions to the traffic flow, restoration of Valletta’s buildings, transportation within the city, tunnels, car parking and the area outside City Gate where shabby kiosks still proliferate, and taxis are allowed to park haphazardly. I also wrote about entertainment, tourist attractions, and presented a plan of the city. Over the years, I spoke on several occasions. I am a member of the Building Industry Consultative Council (BICC) and we have a committee that is focusing on the regeneration of Valletta. I feel now is the time not just to comment but, having studied the Valletta strategy report, I want to go into detail and present an actual improved master plan. If the government wants to tackle the issue of Valletta seriously, we need to have a workable time frame of 10 years on certain work that needs to be done. Although there are certain measures, like the circular transport system and the cleaning of façades, that 1 can be started immediately without a great capital outlay, there are other measures that require a lot of planning, creative thinking and co-ordination between the various entities involved, as outlined in the Valletta strategy report. Section 1 – Transportation and Parking While the Valletta strategy report focuses on our capital city, such a master plan should also incorporate Floriana because, if cars are to be removed from Valletta, they need to be placed somewhere in the vicinity. One strategy is to encourage people to travel to Valletta through other means of transport, either through the maritime links within Marsamxett and Grand harbours, or through public transport. The other alternative is to continue to develop more car parks in the periphery of Valletta, as outlined below. We have to consider that a Renaissance Capital City will definitely create a higher demand on transportation and parking. 1.1 Circular bus routes around Valletta and its suburbs One of Valletta’s challenges is the concentration of commercial activity in the top half of Republic Street, and the top half of Merchants Street. Old Bakery Street has a concentration of offices and there are also some shops in St Paul Street. Yet there is hardly any commercial activity in the lower part of Valletta. One way to generate this commercial activity all around Valletta is to create a free public shuttle circular bus system with low-floor buses. I insist that the service should be free since a similar service I had introduced around Naxxar, linking it to Għargħur, Magħtab, Salina and Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, when I was the mayor, was well liked. The area occupied by Valletta is much smaller. Naturally, Valletta/Floriana needs more frequent circular buses but, even if the service were to cost the government €250,000 a year, this amount is not huge relatively, when you are talking of breathing new life into a UNESCO world heritage site. Look how much more activity you are going to generate in Valletta and how many more taxes the Government will collect in return. One route will go around the internal part of Valletta, which will be pedestrianised (red route) and the other would go around the periphery (blue route) along the seafront past the Valletta Waterfront to the roundabout at Il-Menqa in Marsa, stopping near the Park & Ride and going round Floriana back to Valletta. At certain points these routes overlap so that you can stop at one point or another to change from one route to the other. 2 This can be done immediately and does not require a large investment. It is important that it should be a free service, not even one at a nominal fee. When I was in Naxxar the operator suggested that we charge 2c. It would waste too much time for the bus driver to give change and am I going to check the bus driver for how much he pocketed on every trip? This would then make it more expensive and time consuming. 1.2 Transportation nodes I have identified two transportation nodes to promote a more car-free Valletta: one is for the land transportation in Floriana and the other at the bottom of Ta’ Liesse Hill for maritime connections to Sliema, the Cottonera and Gozo (see Section 2). The Land Transportation Node next to Granaries would enable various ways to get into Valletta. From this node, one can catch the circular buses to the interior or periphery of Valletta, a taxi or electric cab, or a horse-drawn cab as well as a link to the underground electric tram that connects the Park & Ride in Floriana to City Gate. This will offer a choice in one place. 1.3 Car parks in and around Valletta There are already a number of car parks in and around Valletta but these are clearly inadequate if larger parts of Valletta are to be pedestrianised. The MCP car park is currently being enlarged and the Park & Ride car park is another option. A small tunnel can be excavated from Portes des Bombes so as to connect the Floriana Park & Ride with the existing underground tunnel that used to be used by the Malta railway. Then electric people-movers, like you find in many airports abroad linking one air terminal with another, can be used to get to the end of the tunnel at the proposed restored St Magdalen Ravelin near City Gate (see Section 1.4). These people movers are driverless and can operate 24x7. You would not need to queue to catch a bus and get caught in traffic passing through Floriana. Access from the existing tunnel to street level would be via escalators. There is the potential for two more very large underground car parks in the vicinity of Valletta. One with a capacity of around 3,000 cars can be excavated below the Floriana playing field (currently used as an open air car park). This can have two accesses, one from Sa Maison for the North traffic and another from Floriana for the South and Centre of Malta. The upper two levels of this car park can be devoted to a regional sports centre, with an open air football pitch, tennis courts and other outdoor sports facilities on top. The level of the roof could actually be lowered by one floor to create spectator stands without obscuring the view from the Mall gardens. 3 What I have also suggested for many years is that, once this car park is excavated, access from the north can be created by excavating a short tunnel from Haywharf so that cars would not even need to enter Floriana. Another potentially large area that can be transformed into a car park is the playing field in Floriana overlooking Grand Harbour. This can be excavated and can take approximately 600 cars, while the playing field can be re-built on its roof. There could be access to this car park both from the waterfront back road and from street level in Floriana. I am also proposing that there should be mini-underground car parking in Valletta which will be exclusively for either top management of companies with offices in Valletta or to service nearby four- and five-star hotels. If a company is capable of investing several million euros in office space, it can invest a further few hundred thousand euro to have its own underground car park for its senior executives. The ground level can accommodate a public garden I have identified at least seven locations around Valletta for these car parks. One of these is the Valletta primary school, situated behind Evans Building, which I have highlighted as a possible site for a five-star hotel (see Section 3). This can be demolished and a car park for the hotel built beneath it with the school being rebuilt on top of the car park. 1.4 Restore St Magdalene Ravelins One of my proposals that dates back to 2009 is to re-excavate or, even better, restore the two ravelins that lie below the Triton Fountain outside City Gate. When the first fountain was installed there after World War I, the top two metres of St Magdalene Ravelins were removed to create the open space between the end of the Mall Garden and the entrance to Valletta. These large stone blocks were probably disposed of in the ditch below. They surely did not cart them away since they did not need the stone at the time.