It would be interesting to find out whether the Minister for Transport and the chairman and chief executive officer of Transport Malta will be prepared to assume personal responsibility if and when a pedestrian is seriously hurt in a section of Triq il-Linja in Attard.

It appears that the safety of pedestrians ranks at the lowest level in the order of priorities for Transport Malta.

In a narrow section at one part of Triq il-Linja there used to be a short stretch of a very narrow pavement for pedestrians. In its infinite wisdom, Transport Malta decided that this narrow pavement was creating a bottleneck for vehicles, so it removed the pavement, painted the road red and installed a warning traffic sign indicating a ‘live hazard’ and in particular the presence of ‘pedestrians in road ahead’.

As far as it is known, such an arrangement – the removal of a pavement and its substitution with red paint – is not covered in the Highway Code, and there are no provisions in the Motor Vehicle Regulations, 1994, for such arrangements.

The red paint on the road is hardly visible, and the traffic sign is very often ignored by drivers. A serious accident is waiting to happen.

This section of the road used to be one way during the morning rush hour, but Transport Malta decided to remove such a restriction after hundreds, if not thousands, of drivers were ticketed for non-observance of the restriction.

If Transport Malta were serious, it would have introduced a similar restriction in the opposite direction for the afternoon/evening rush hour traffic and not lift the morning restriction.

The increased traffic flow in this section of Attard very close to the village core is unsustainable. What happened to the projected bypass of Attard? Why can’t Transport Malta or the Ministry for Transport allocate some of the millions of euros collected from vehicle taxation to build the Attard bypass?

In other countries, where the road is too narrow for two vehicles to pass in the opposite direction at the same time, the authorities have found a very easy solution. They have introduced traffic lights so that vehicles proceed in turn in opposite directions.

The time has come for Transport Malta to stop experimenting with people’s lives and start managing traffic in the proper way.

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