By Tom Cleaver

A road tunnel is to be built under the Pentadaktylos mountain range to connect Kyrenia with the town of Kythrea, the north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli said on Monday.

Speaking to Kibris TV, he said the tunnel will be 3.5 kilometres in length, and that its construction will “not be a difficult project”.

“There are 50 or 60 such tunnels in Turkey … This project will both ease traffic and prevent loss of life,” he said.

The tunnel will offer an alternative to the current road between Kyrenia and Kythrea, known as the “mountain road”.

That road is infamous among Turkish Cypriot motorists, with frequent accidents occurring on it, often involving heavy goods vehicles.

Arikli also said on Monday that the mountain road will be widened in the coming months, with a crawler lane set to be built for heavy goods vehicles.

Last year, Cyprus Turkish chamber of mechanical engineers (KTMMO) chairman Ayer Yarkiner had said the rate of fatalities on roads in the north is “six times the European Union average”.

He added that the fatality rate is also three times that of Turkey and noted that while unclear population statistics may impact the figures, “measures must be taken to prevent an increase in the number of deaths.

“If traffic has remained so primitive and unsafe, it is because we have been in a death sleep on this issue since 1974,” he said, adding that the authorities should devise strategies and plans with the goal of there being “zero loss of life”.

He said ideas could include speed limits being determined according to vehicle classes, “because the severity of collisions increases and the ability to slow down decreases as the mass of vehicles increases.”