Forking left on Naxxar Road, San Ġwann, to Għargħur Road in Birkirkara, one comes to a crossroad half-way through to Dun Karm Street, better known as the Birkirkara Bypass.
What is badly needed is a traffic mirror at the end of Erin Serracino Inglott street- Alfred Brincat, Birkirkara
Il-Qasbi Street, on the left again, is a narrow and very winding street with many blind spots where two cars cannot go through at the same time.
Some time ago this street was nicely tarmacked and is now quite popular with those wanting to take a shortcut to San Ġwann, thus avoiding the traffic in Naxxar Road and at the same time relieving this busy street from some of its heavy traffic.
I say this was an excellent idea and I have to add that in spite ofits structure, there is hardly ever any congestion and even feweraccidents.
At bottlenecks, drivers simply reverse a few metres into the open pockets and all goes on smoothly – if only parking would be prohibited, especially in certain spots.
What is badly needed is a traffic mirror at the end of Erin Serracino Inglott Street facing Il-Qasbi Street so that oncoming traffic down Għargħur Street would not be such a hazard to traffic exiting Tal-Qasbi Street, which is a blind spot.
Now the irony is that the opposite street, Erin Serracino Inglott, which leads to the Ganu Street roundabout and which is much wider, with not a single spotwhere two cars cannot go through together, was turned into a one-way street!
This is causing a lot of inconvenience to traffic coming from San Ġwann and wanting to go towards Lija/Mosta. This traffic has to go all the way down Għargħur Street, then drive back as far as the next roundabout, turn back again and then finally come to the Ganu Street roundabout – where it would have come in the first place had Erin Serracino Inglott Street not been turned into a one-way street, thus going about a kilometre longer than necessary, causing waste of time and fuel at the price of more pollution. Besides, this is causing more chaos and congestion at the roundabout.
What’s more, two-way traffic is allowed in the lower part of this street, which is a residential area and where parking is allowed on both sides. It simply doesn’t make sense.
It would have been better to have this street one-way down and not up, and traffic towards San Ġwann would go up Għargħur Street, which incidentally is already a two-way street except for a few metres before coming to the crossroads.
But still, Serracino Inglott Street is good and wide enough to take two-way traffic. There seems to be no logic having Il-Qasbi Street two-way and this street a one-way. This system is only causing a lot of inconvenience and hassle.