Safety in St Mark Street

This week I sat down with several residents of St Mark Street in Valletta, earmarked to be the busiest street as from May 1 following the dismantling of City Gate and the overhead pass, Pope Pius V Street.

St Mark Street will be the only point of entry to the upper part of Valletta and City Gate flats. Therefore a huge amount of cars will be using this entry, with numbers going well over a thousand. The residents of this street are very concerned about their safety since this street is very narrow and has no pavements.

They are also requesting protective bars to be placed in front of residential doors to keep children and elderly people from crossing inadvertently. Such bars have been placed in similar streets where traffic has increased considerably, such as St Lucia Street.

The City Gate project has been causing some concern to residents of different parts of Valletta so far as traffic management is concerned. This has been substantiated by several mistakes made on street names in a road map that was distributed to all Valletta addresses on April 16.

At this point we urge mayor Alexiei Dingli to intervene with an immediate action plan before May 1. We cannot turn back the tide but we can do our best to keep citizens safe from unplanned hazards.