Measures interrupting traffic on bypasses

Transport Minister Austin Gatt told Parliament yesterday that while bridges would be built as required over bypasses, one could not continue to undermine the nature of such roads by creating things which interrupted traffic flow.

Dr Gatt was answering a question by Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat over what stage had been reached in a development application submitted to Mepa for the building of a footbridge over the Mrieħel bypass following a double fatality there in 2005. The minister said that whatever needed to be built would be built and he did not know offhand what stage had been reached on the development application.

He said that after village cores became congested with traffic, bypasses had started being constructed to take motorists from one point to another as quickly as possible, avoiding the village cores.

But then roundabouts had started being created, and then speed cameras, traffic lights and zebra crossings rather than overpasses and bridges. As a result, people ended up crossing the bypasses in areas which they should not cross.

The Mrieħel bypass itself included junctions, a speed camera, three or four zebra crossings and two traffic lights, all of which interrupted traffic flow and undermined the very purpose of the bypass.

Dr Gatt said roads such as the Mrieħel bypass should not be the same as St Anne Street in Floriana.