Grossly overloaded buses

Every night I watch in horror as grossly overloaded buses drive at breakneck speed along the Sliema seafront transporting passengers, mostly young foreign students, packed tight like sardines.

Usually, it is the late buses from Paceville which are so laden. However, it is not the first time that I have seen early evening similarly overloaded buses proceeding to St Julians. Should such a bus ever be involved in a traffic accident the number of injured persons, young foreign students, is bound to be considerable.

Also such overloaded buses are likely to give rise to incidents.

Certain students have a reputation for being noisy and some of our bus drivers are known to be uncouth and short tempered, besides being permanently short of change. It is about time that Transport Malta, the police, the Malta Tourism Authority and even the Public Transport Association put a stop to this abuse.

As a first step, I suggest that more buses are made immediately available late in the evening at the St Andrews terminus to meet the existing demand.

I also suggest that, at this time of the year, the frequency of buses leaving the same terminus be increased.

There was a time when buses were obliged to leave the terminus with a specified number of empty seats to pick up passengers along the route. Is such a regulation no longer in place?