New traffic system in Rabat today

A long awaited new traffic management system for Rabat is to come into force today with Nikola Saura Street being made one-way up from Saqqajja.

The new system is intended to ease traffic and reduce pollution from the heart of the town by directing traffic to Labour Avenue in Nigret and the Mtarfa by-pass.

The new traffic arrangements were to come into effect last Monday but the decision was postponed after Rabat local council closed its doors the previous Friday in protest at what it called the transport minister's lack of consultation with the council.

The decision marks the end of a number of failed attempts to solve the traffic system which had been discussed during a series of meetings between the Malta Transport Authority and Rabat council.

The MTA had asked the council to make proposals for an alternative.

"The only proposal forwarded by the council was, 'not to do anything' which was not acceptable to the authority," the MTA said in a statement last Thursday.

During the discussions, the council agreed to turn Kola Xara Street into a one-way street. The council asked the authority to upgrade the junction at Hal-Tartarni, Dingli Road and Labour Avenue. The authority has already started this.

The council claimed that the tug of war between the council and the ministry of transport over the new traffic arrangements had been going on for a year mainly because the ministry of transport had talked to residents and not directly to the local council.

However, Transport Minister Censu Galea had pointed out that although he had not met the council in an official manner, members of the Traffic Control Board had been in contact with the council regularly.

When contacted, Rabat mayor Rudolph Grima said he would rather not comment on the matter as he personally had a conflict of interest which he himself had made public, namely that his father ran a petrol station at Saqqajja.

Custom at the station is bound to suffer once traffic is not from today allowed down from Count Roger Street towards the Saqqajja.

A council spokesman had said that with the new arrangements, residents at St Francis Street would have to go round the town to get out of Rabat and several shops would lose custom.

The new arrangements would avoid the bottlenecks that used to result there all too often, to the chagrin of both motorists and residents.

A substantial number of residents who phoned in The Times said the arrangements would bring a great sigh of relief to residents who for the past year had to suffer an ever increasing load of traffic and increasing pollution.

Residents argued that the new arrangements would keep out of the town's core those motorists who drove through Rabat on their way to Valletta, Mosta or elsewhere.