Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/433160
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2014 10 News RAPHAEL VASSALLO ALONGSIDE oil exploration, promises of great infrastructural projects – bridges to or airstrips on Gozo, for instance – are among the ideas many people have come to ex- pect from governments eager to dis- tract the general public from other issues. This week's announcement of a possible monorail system – an el- evated, single track railway line con- necting various parts of the island – was no exception. Following hard on the heels of a controversy which ended with a minister's dismissal last Tuesday, the sudden unexpected an- nouncement of a €1.42 billion public transport project was initially met with scepticism… as if it were just another smokescreen to add to all the rest. Still, the task force that proposed the idea, headed by financial services expert Alfred Mifsud, was nothing if not upbeat about both its feasibility and the benefits such a project would entail. "Being an island state on the pe- riphery of Europe, Malta does not share hard borders with other EU states and is disadvantaged both by its insularity and by the inability to co-ordinate with other member states for cross-border projects," the task force said. A monorail, it concluded, was the 'ultimate solution for urban mobil- ity': "This will bring a cataclysmic change to the daily commute, mak- ing public transport the preferred means of urban transport, generat- ing efficiency and economic growth as people will spend less time wasted in traffic congestions." Pie in the sky? All the same, this is territory we have been over before countless times in the past: in some cases lit- erally, as a monorail system had fea- tured in another proposal submitted by entrepreneur Angelo Xuereb over 23 years ago, but which was at the time rejected. And while the same general idea has now been resuscitated by Trans- port Malta – thus giving it a degree of official credence – we are also (yet again) concurrently discussing the possibility of a bridge connecting Malta to Gozo: this time to be built by Chinese infrastructural compa- nies, for the hefty sum of €1 billion. As with the boy who cried wolf, people may be forgiven for taking such grand suggestions with more than a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, there are a number of aspects to this latest proposal that make it a likelier prospect to materi- alise than its many unrealised pred- ecessors. The first and most crucial is the possibility of EU funding, which would address the most conspicuous stumbling blocks faced by all such ideas: money. Such projects are eligible for partial EU funding via the European Invest- ment Bank, so long as 50% of the costs are borne by the government. The project proposal submitted to the Transport Authority envisages a public private partnership, whereby the government would co-finance the investment by conducting all techni- cal, environmental and regulatory studies. The private sector would be expected to fork out the shortfall. Another consideration is the fact that – unlike Malta's bus service, and certainly unlike toll-bridges or tun- nels – monorails are cost-effective and have been known to run at a profit: making the idea at once more attractive to investors. The way forward Monorails are in fact increasing in popularity as a (mostly inner-city) means of transportation: in the past decade alone, such systems were put into place in Dusseldorf, Germany; Moscow, Russia; Zaragoza, Spain; and, most recently, the Marconi Ex- press in Bologna, Italy: a five-kilome- tre monorail line, currently under construction, connecting the airport to the central railway station. The flipside of these advantages is that Malta's rail network, envisaged to run for 79km, is substantially larg- er than any of the above systems, and therefore considerably more expen- sive to build. Monorails are not nor- mally expected to provide connectiv- ity services for entire countries; and while Malta is small enough to adopt inner-city modes of transportation, the project remains a good deal more ambitious than any of its European counterparts… nearly all of which provide only limited, unidirectional connections to and from airports. One of the factors contributing to the high cost involved is the fact that Malta's system will not be unidirec- tional: the project brief describes "over-ground and underground lines Monorail: A one-track Would the introduction of a monorail system finally address Malta's traffic situation? Would it usher in a repeat of the chaos that ensued with the public transport reform of 2012? Or is it just a pie-in-the-sky idea that will never materialise at all? A monorail system had featured in another proposal submitted by entrepreneur Angelo Xuereb over 23 years ago. "I am delighted that the government has now understood this is the way forward," he said A monorail for Malta – the pros and cons Advantages Safety: Whether they are of the straddle-beam or suspended variety, modern monorail technology makes derailment virtually impossible. As monorail is elevated, accidents with surface traffic are impossible. Street rail systems with grade crossings (light rail, trams or trollies) have a much higher statistical rate of accidents than monorails. Environment: Since most are electrically powered, monorails are non- polluting. Disadvantages Expense: At €1.49 billion, a monorail system would cost 1.5 times more than a bridge to Gozo. The project may be co-funded by the EU, but 50% of expenses must still be borne locally. Aesthetics: A monorail runs on elevated pylons, which maximise visibility and can be considered obtrusive and unsightly.