NICOSIA MAYOR Eleni Mavrou yesterday signed a five-year contract for an ambitious programme to build pavements and road-drainage in 100 of the capital’s streets, promising to stamp out illegal parking as much as possible.
“Nicosia will improve its infrastructure by acquiring pavements and avoiding rain runoff problems, it will acquire pavements so that residents can walk about safely, and above all the city will become more beautiful and civil,” she said, adding that the aim was for the construction of pavements to begin in early 2010, by May at the latest.
Asked by the Cyprus Mail about the problem of people parking on pavements, Mavrou said that she does not like bollards, but has been forced to introduce them widely because a range of measures designed to reduce pavement-parking – from raising awareness to policing – “have not been effective”. The new pavements will most likely have bollards, as well as special features for the blind and disabled, she said.
Mavrou also said that the Municipality had decided to introduce a third shift of traffic wardens. This will require taking on more staff, and the Finance Ministry has been asked for funding approval. “The sooner we receive it, the better”, she added.
Ultimately, though, “you can’t police illegal parking in the capital’s 1,000 streets 24 hours a day. We can limit the problem by placing bollards, but finally we need to rely on people’s conscience.”
The new pavements’ project involves constructing an estimated 32 kilometres of pavements and road drainage, plus road-resurfacing, in 100 streets in the Ayios Andreas, Ayios Antonios, Ayioi Omologites, Kaimakli, Pallouriotissa and Tripiotis areas, at an estimated cost of around €32 million.
The contract with architectural firm A F Modinos & S A Vrahimis runs for five years. The first year covers a detailed review of the plans and schedule of works, the publication of the assignment of charges to property-owners, the assessment of any objections, and the preparation of tendering specifications. The next three years involve supervising the work itself, and then there is a further year’s liability to cover any faults, oversights or repairs.
The Municipal Council has also given the green light for a detailed study for the second phase, covering 80 streets in the Kaimakli/North Pole and Pallouriotissa areas, and elsewhere across Nicosia.
The 100 streets covered by the current phase have been split into 15 groups, and work will be carried out simultaneously in two or three different parts of the city at a time, in an attempt to limit the inconvenience to residents. These streets were selected after assessing the scale of problems relating to poor road safety and torrential rainfall. They predate the provisions of the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law, which obliges anyone raising a new building to also build a pavement along its road frontage.
Article 17 of the law also allows a municipality to levy a proportional surcharge on a property-owner if it carries out pavement construction or maintenance on older streets, and this power will apply to the work planned under the current scheme.
Mavrou said that the work will be financed through loans of up to 25 years, and people will be able to pay their surcharge up front, or spread it over annual or monthly payments with interest for up to 25 years. She said that the surcharges would probably be €80-100 for houses with small frontages and as much as €10,000-15,000 for large developments.
[SIDEBAR]
How does Article 17 of the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law work in practice?
Once the Municipal Council decides to construct, reconstruct or improve a road, it arranges for plans, specifications and cost estimates to be drawn up. These are then made available for inspection for a two-month period, and this is advertised in the Government Gazette and newspapers.
The ads specify the estimated cost of the work, the names of the property-owners obliged to bear the cost, the proportion of the cost to be borne by each of them, and the number of years during which they will make their contributions in equal annual payments.
During the two-month review period, any listed property-owner can object in writing to the Municipality. The Council will then review the objection, take a final and binding decision, and then publish that decision in the Gazette. At that point, the Council starts the public tendering process for the work.
Once the work is completed, the exact costs are published in the Gazette, together with the final share payable by the relevant property-owners. The total amount due and the amount of each annual payment are then listed by the Land Registry against each property as a surcharge and duty payable.
