New Polis motorway pointless, say Greens

WORK to construct a Paphos to Polis Chrysochous motorway will begin within two years, it was reported this week. But the news has been attacked by environmentalists, who call it a pointless project.

The new road will be designed to cope with the development boom in the area and also to reduce the current high rate of accidents on the existing road.
Paphos police say there has been an increase in the number of fatal accidents on the winding uphill Paphos to Polis road, mostly caused by impatient drivers trying to overtake slow-moving trucks.

According to the Paphos weekly paper I Phoni, the government has signed a contract with Pricewaterhouse Coopers for a preliminary study on the construction of a new motorway on a DBFO (develop-build-finance-operate) method. The study is expected to be completed in 2005.

The cost of the new motorway is thought to be in the region of £95 million, and it is expected to be complete by 2008.

But the move has been attacked by the local Green Party, which claims the new road will cause irreversible damage to the environment.

Paphos Green Party spokesman Andreas Evlogis told the Sunday Mail that building a new motorway was pointless.

“They could have saved so much money by simply widening the road the same way they widened the Limassol to Platres road,” he said.
“The damage to the environment will be devastating. They will build tunnels and bridges and a whole valley will be torn in half. It will destroy much of the flora and fauna in the area.

“And the cost of construction of a 35-kilometre motorway is simply too high: they could have saved so much by simply widening the road to give drivers more space to overtake.”

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.