Traffic lights and all that...

Hello Malta Transport Authority board, is that you? Sorry if I woke you but it is almost nine in the morning and as you are the administrator of our roads, I thought that you should know that this morning (October 7) it took me almost 40 minutes to get from Swieqi to Blata l-Bajda. No, it was not raining, there were no collisions, there were no flowers galore trucks and no huge cranes moving along at a snail's pace. I can only put it down to poor management of the Kappara traffic lights.

Also this morning, please note it took me eight minutes to exit Swieqi as, to date, nothing has been done to compensate for the closure, some five weeks ago, of one of the main exits out of Swieqi. This, despite the large number of irate Swieqi residents. I then had no option but to join the queue of vehicles on the Regional Road, which stretched from the Paceville traffic lights to the Kappara traffic lights. With two vehicles abreast there must have been at least 1,000 vehicles in the queue. Take an average of 1.5 persons per vehicle and 20 minutes lead time to navigate the stretch which will give you a staggering 4,500 hours of lost time every hour of grid lock. To say nothing of spent fuel!

Solutions? The fact that there is no queue when the Kappara lights are off must mean something and perhaps it would help if the green light for the vehicles coming from the Paceville direction is left on for at least 10 seconds more than at present. A periodic tweaking of the light duration is a must and the fact that at 6 p.m. the green light for traffic coming from Msida switches on before that for the traffic on the roundabout shows that precious little monitoring is taking place.

Perhaps all that is needed is to send the foreign traffic expert home, switch off the Kappara lights and get some old-fashioned traffic management from the boys and girls in blue or brown! Who cares about the colour as long as the traffic moves.

Come on Swieqi, Pembroke, Ibrag, High Ridge, St Julian's and Paceville residents, make your voice heard so we can get some action.

While on the subject of the Kappara traffic lights, how about installing cameras to identify those who jump the red light? The expense is minimal when compared to a fatal accident that can be averted by the installation of the cameras.