Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/969423
maltatoday SUNDAY 15 APRIL 2018 Interview 15 wrong mix. Abroad, when you drive on the motorway, it could be rain- ing cats and dogs... but you still have a good grip on the road. In Malta, your car starts swerving about like Cinderella. Why? Because we're using the wrong mix. The base is soft tarmac, made locally; and on top we put a layer of good-quality gravel imported from overseas. But with the weight of trucks, and the heat, what happens is that after five years, the good-quality gravel filters downwards into the soft tarmac beneath... and the bitumen rises to the surface. That's why all our roads become slippery after five years. So why not use crushed excavation waste to make a solid base of con- crete? I've tested it. Using crushed stone waste instead of gravel, you can achieve 50% more strength than normal concrete... I did it myself, so I know it can be done. You have often made similar suggestions in press articles, yet (by your own earlier admission) nothing seems to have come of it. Do you have any reason to believe the reaction to your masterplan will be any different? And if not... why even bother in the first place? Because I love construction, I love development, and I love sustainable development above all. All the ar- ticles I've written over the past 35 years or so... some of the ideas were implemented, some were not. For me, however, they were just com- mon sense... One example that is worth mentioning today – because so much has happened in the sector in the meantime – is public transport. In 2014, you presented a 'Masterplan for Traffic and an Integrated Public Transport system'. There have been public transport reforms since then... but traffic in general appears to have deteriorated alarmingly. Do you still think your own plan would have done a better job? And why do you think your suggestions (among others, for a 'mass elevated and underground transport system') were ignored? [Shrugs] Do we always ignore prac- tical suggestions, and go for imprac- tical ones instead? Now, for instance, we are once again talking about a tunnel between Malta and Gozo. To me, that's crazy. We're going to kill Gozo. Would you go to Gozo, just to end up in traffic jams there as well? That's not why people go to Gozo. If it happens, they'll just go to Sicily instead. [Pause] Why? Why are we doing this? When I speak to Gozi- tans... they know I am against this project. But some of them are friends of mine; we talk frankly. I tell them: 'Do you want more cars in Gozo?' They say: 'No.' 'So why do you want a tunnel?' 'Because we wait too long [for the ferry].' Well...to be fair they have a point, don't they? Thousands of Gozitans need to travel to Malta every day for work, study, etc... Yes, yes. I'm not denying it is a problem. But the solution should surely be... get faster ferries. Why does it have to take half an hour to cross the Gozo channel? A fast ferry, nowadays, can do it in five minutes. And it's not just ferries, either. If there is one place where bendy-buses make sense, it would be to take passengers from Mgarr to Rabat [Gozo], where they can get taxis to anywhere in Gozo for E10... or a circular bus service. Same on the other side: a fast bus to Mosta, where there would be an interchange station. That would solve the problem of waiting... Yet while the Gozo tunnel idea seems to be gaining ground... other innovative ideas (such as an underground train service) are constantly shot down before even being discussed. We still rely almost exclusively on buses for all our public transport needs. Why are we so adventurous with some infrastructural ideas, and so conservative in others? Politicians are there for five years. Which, in practice, means that they can only ever plan for four years. The last year is election year: it's all 'votes, votes, votes'. Now: something like a mass transit system would take 20 years. But that's because they're not consulting, for example... me. I can do it in five years. At least, the first phase; then we expand as we go along. But you have to start with the first phase anyway. As to why we never consider more innovative ways... sooner or later we will have to. If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that you can't stop progress. That is an impossibility. Let me give you an example. In 1952, when they intro- duced machines to cut stone – as you can imagine, it's much faster to cut stone with stone-cutting ma- chines, than with chisels – the con- tractors who worked with chisels all went on strike. They wouldn't accept it... because they couldn't see the long-term benefits. And going even further back: when electricity was introduced to Malta, the paraf- fin vendors all objected. They went on strike, too. Did it stop electricity? [...] It happened to me as well. When I built 'Precast' [in 1991] – the larg- est concrete factory in Malta – the soft-stone quarry owners all went on strike for three weeks. All quar- ries refused to supply anyone with stone... and if one quarry didn't go along with the strike, it would be ransacked. They drove their big trucks all around Malta, hooting their loud horns... stopping outside Castille, where they knew there was a Cabinet meeting going on. [Imi- tates the sound of truck horns] Why? Because they thought that I was sud- denly going to build houses ready- made. That houses would spring up, all ready to move into, and they would not be able to sell their stone anymore. I told them, 'You're crazy. All I'm going to build are columns, beams and slab. You can enclose it in stone, brick, whatever....' That was in 1991, or thereabouts. Today, we're still facing the same mentality. We're not thinking outside the box... we're not consulting the private sec- tor. That irritates me... ANGELO XUEREB, winner of EY's 'Malta Entrepreneur of the Year' award, has literally carved out a construction empire out of Malta's living rock. But after 35 years in the development sector, he is close to giving up on his most ambitious project yet: a 'masterplan for the Maltese islands' Something like a mass transit system would take 20 years. But that's because they're not consulting, for example... me. I can do it in five years... MASS TRANSIT outside the box'