During Easter Holy Week, the final plans and documents for the projects that fall under the Limassol Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan are expected to be delivered by the Mic-hub international team of scholars to the Department of Public Works, the Head of the Sustainable Mobility Department, Evi Anagiotou, told "Entrepreneurial Limassol". The Head of the Department of Sustainable Mobility added that the Department will have one month to process them and carry out the necessary controls and procedures (which are required by law for these projects) before they are auctioned and then the tender will be announced for construction projects.
The central bus lane will be built on the coastal road, starting from Agios Tychonas and ending near the Medieval Castle. As Ms. Anagiotou explained, from Agios Tychonas to Crowne Plaza, the bus will not operate in an exclusive use lane, because it is not justified by the passenger traffic and on the other hand, because the traffic from private cars is not high and by utilizing the technology, it is possible to ensure bus priority.
From the Crowne Plaza Traffic Lights to the Medieval Castle, bus traffic and priority will be assigned to it, in its dedicated traffic lanes. The vertical bus lane will start from the Park and Ride that will be created on the site of the old English biological station (near the Polemidia roundabout) in a southerly direction on Nikos and Despina Pattihis Avenue. In its southernmost section (where it will be connected to the promenade) the priority of the bus will again be ensured by using technology, due to the characteristics of the road there and until the appropriate arrangements are made.
The Head of the Department of Sustainable Mobility indicated that after joint sessions of her team with the Municipal Council and the Mayor of Limassol, the two sides jointly decided that the greatest benefits would be ensured, the so-called synergistic action (interaction that multiplies the results) and a sequence of projects with the connection of the parking and transfer station of Polemidia with the beach road. With this given, the extension of a vertical bus lane was preferred rather than the construction of 2 smaller ones, as were the initial thoughts.
Along with the bus lanes, the two Park and Ride will be built in Polemidia and Agios Tychonas (in the existing parking area), half of which will remain as it is and the other half will be developed into a Parking and Transfer Station. At the same time, the network of cycle lanes and cycle paths, designed by the Mic-hub design team, will be constructed. As is well known, €14.5 million has been secured from the European Recovery and Resilience Fund for projects from the Department of Public Works that fall under the Limassol Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan.
The Department of Public Works, as well as representatives of the European Investment Bank and the EU, have repeatedly emphasized that signatures for the projects should be signed by June 2024 and they should be received by March 2026, in order not to lose the window of opportunity for the money to be disbursed.
