A tragic record

I recently saw an ICYMI post on social media from Times of Malta titled ‘A tragic record: 26 road deaths in last 12 months’ that cited safer pedestrian and cycle routes. Proposals include 50 or 60, nobody is quite sure how long, kilometres of cycle lanes.

Yet, nobody knows what those routes, a staggering two per cent of our entire road network, are. They won’t make an ounce of difference, diluted as they are, unless they address specifically dangerous junctions etc... as opposed to being the cosmetic disconnected and dysfunctional routes we have seen to date.

The process seems to be, determined by how little we can afford, €36 million, to shut people up. That, we now know, will build 50-60kms, rather than the correct systematic safety approach of building it where we need it most.

Where is the Malta Road Safety Council in this and what do the individual junction and road safety assessments say? Far, far more important we are limited to correcting just two per cent of the current network for all road users, drivers as well.

If we want people to use alternatives such as walking, cycling and using those means to reach buses, rather than all of us having to buy electric cars (which will solve nothing), then we need to look at a systematic safety approach to junction and road design, not the 1970s car-centric handbook we are still using.

Jim Wightman – St Julian’s

Malta’s bizarre tax flaw

In a bizarre flaw in the Malta tax tables, an individual earning €19,501 will be taxed €90 on €1 of income.

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has been aware of this ludicrous situation for at least the past year and has done nothing to correct it.

Is this an acceptable state of affairs?

Denis Sugrue – Sliema

Not only a health hazard

Garbage left in a parapet.

Ross Street is a small stretch of road in St Julian’s. Among the few residents, we have two bars, two take-aways, two hotels, a guesthouse and a hostel. Another two hotels are being built while another three houses are in the pipeline to be demolished.

People are taking advantage and disposing of their litter in one of the parapets (photo). In the weekends, this also serves as a public convenience with rivers of urine flowing down the street. We have been reporting this for months, still, no action has as yet been taken.

The weather is warming up and we now expect cockroaches and rodents to fester in our street. Apart from being a health hazard, it is also an eyesore to us residents and is far from a welcoming impression for our visitors.

Marie Louise Cilia – St Julian’s

Car removed

I would like to inform you that the abandoned car in Buġibba, the subject of my two letters about it, has, at last, been removed from where it was parked after my letter was published last week (March 24) in the Times of Malta.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Joseph Cachia – St Paul’s Bay