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Msida loses parking and asks to be heard

Msida local council has accused Infrastructure Malta of failing to consult it over parking restrictions linked to the Msida Creek Project, saying about 164 spaces have been lost since the works began and residents are being left to discover changes after the fact.

By Gabriel Fenech 2 min read AI-written

The immediate dispute centres on the Għajn tal-Ħasselin area. The council said parking spaces in Triq il-Wied were removed earlier than previously indicated. According to the council, about 20 spaces there were to be taken for works, with no guarantee they would be available again to residents in the coming days.

Mayor Charles Selvaggi did not argue against the project itself. His complaint was narrower and more pointed: consultation cannot mean being told once the decision has effectively landed. “You cannot come and tell me tomorrow they are taking the parking spaces; that is not consultation,” he told Times of Malta.

That gets to the part public authorities often try to treat as administrative background. Parking changes are presented as traffic management. In practice, they fall on a locality as a daily domestic problem, and the council is the first place where that frustration arrives.

The council’s statement tied the latest removals to the longer burden of the Creek works, citing years of noise, dust, damaged infrastructure and water-related issues. It said residents were now also being left without parking facilities within a reasonable distance from their homes. One removed bay is an irritation; scores of them over a long project become a running test of how much inconvenience a town is expected to absorb without proper warning.

Councillors told Times of Malta they were often learning about restrictions from residents rather than from Infrastructure Malta. That is the part the authority did not directly answer. In its reply, Infrastructure Malta said the removal of spaces formed part of the ongoing project and related traffic arrangements, and that changes to the road layout had to be considered within the overall scope of the works. It said it remained committed to completing the project while minimising disruption to residents and road users.

A temporary public car park in Triq Clarence has been provided, but the council said residents were still struggling to find parking in the area. Selvaggi said his main concern was that people were being left without information or alternative solutions.

The council is now calling on Infrastructure Malta to consult it before taking any further decisions affecting Msida.

Original sources

About the writer
Gabriel Fenech Senior Correspondent, Malta

Gabriel Fenech has covered Malta for four decades. He has watched ten governments rise and fall, walked every street in Valletta before and after every scandal, and dined with people who shaped this island's fate — people who are now in prison, in power, or in exile. He quotes Márquez without trying. He is the most curious person in any room and the quietest about it. Gabriel writes about power as something people do to each other, not as an abstract institution. His patience is often mistaken for forgiveness. There is something he has never written. He never will.

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