Part of Makarios Avenue will open temporarily to vehicles from next week

Part of Makarios Avenue will temporarily open to all vehicles from next week, Nicosia municipality announced on Friday.

The debate on vehicle access on the revamped avenue had been raging for months, and had not been settled when the it reopened to the public in early December.

Unveiling the project, mayor Constantinos Yiorkadjis said that there were logistical delays that prevented the municipality from going ahead with its original plan of only allowing authorised vehicles to pass through the avenue, as the proposal involved an automatic camera monitoring system, which has not been implemented yet.

As an alternative, the municipality suggested temporarily opening Makarios as a one-way street, with one bus lane and one lane for private vehicles, which was at the time rejected by the traffic research committee, made up of the public works department, the town planning department and the police.

The avenue therefore became pedestrian and bicycle-only until final decisions were made, with Yiorkadjis saying the municipality was waiting for the police to confirm a traffic plan that would work.

According to the newest announcement, from Wednesday January 5, part of Makarios avenue – from the Dighenis Akritas and Spyros Kyprianou avenues junction to the Evagorou and A.G. Leventis avenues junction – will temporarily open to vehicles.

One of the two lanes will be exclusively for buses and the second for all types of vehicles with no need for special permission. Both lanes will be one-way.

“This is a transitory solution until the implementation of the final plan, which will give access to authorised vehicles only,” the municipality said.

It further said that the police have given authorisation for the temporary arrangement until February 15, by which date it will be reviewed and potentially renewed.