Motorists have found a way around the nightmarish morning traffic… by going to work as much as two hours early.
“I start work at 8.45am in Marsa, but you can forget leaving home from Sliema at 8am and getting there on time. I spent two mornings in gridlock traffic. It’s not the getting to work late as much as the having to start my day like that which bothered me,” Eric Grech, 34, who works at a shipping company said.
He explained how he got the idea from other co-workers and people who also worked in the area, who he noticed were already parked outside their offices by the time he got to work.
“Now I’m leaving the house at 6.30am. The drive takes just a few minutes... instead of half an hour or longer. And, my boss lets me leave early,” he said.
Social media has been rife with lengthy debates over the traffic situation since the back-to-school rush kicked in and the summer half-day work shifts went back to full days.
The drive takes just a few minutes instead of half an hour or longer
Among those to enter the online debate have been parents, who took to social media to complain of having to wake their children up before sunrise.
“It’s 5.55am and still pitch black outside. My son has already been awake for 25 minutes,” wrote the administrator of a local social media group on parenting.
Meanwhile, the Transport Ministry’s plan of deploying traffic police at major junctions is having seemingly little effect on traffic flows, unlike major infrastructural projects such as the Kappara Junction project.
Two Air Malta flights were also delayed yesterday after their pilots and cabin crew ended up stuck in morning rush-hour traffic.
Flights KM 306 to Munich and KM394 to Amsterdam were both late in getting off the ground, with pilots apologising to passengers patiently waiting for their flight to take off.
A number of passengers were also late for their flight and were allowed aboard, an Air Malta spokesman said.
“We apologise to passengers for the delays, which unfortunately were down to circumstances out of our control,” the spokesman said, adding that the airline was closely monitoring the situation to ensure road traffic did not affect any more flights.
“Thankfully, in this case, the delays did not have a knock-on effect on later flights,” the spokes-man said.
While the Amsterdam-bound flight was delayed by 21 minutes, passengers en route to Munich got an extra 45 minutes in Malta due to the delay. A passenger on board the Munich flight chuckled as he told the Times of Malta about having to wait.
“The pilot apologised to passengers in both Maltese and English. It made for a change from the usual reasons they give,” he said.