My home and place of work are very close to each other so I rarely suffer the same traffic ordeal experienced by other Maltese commuters on a daily basis.

A couple of days ago, however, I was on my way from St Julian’s to Mrieħel at 6pm and realised just how bad the traffic situation actually is. Traffic was barely moving all the way from Gżira to the Mrieħel bypass with no apparent end in sight.

Although I was travelling in the opposite direction, this brought about a slight bout of anger.

A couple of months ago, the government introduced regulations for people to register electric bicycles, or e-bikes.

Being an owner of one of these, I called Transport Malta to see what would be required for registration.

I found out that since I had bought mine second-hand and did not have the documentation that usually comes with it, I needed to take the bike to Floriana so that it could be inspected by the technical department.

After the inspection was completed, I would have to fill in the necessary paperwork, provide the required payments, and then wait for the registration to be approved.

All of this would require me to take time off work due to Transport Malta’s inconvenient opening hours.

The point of this letter is that it makes absolutely no sense to me that the government is aware of everyone’s frustration with the current traffic situation, and yet it makes it more difficult than it should be to register a vehicle that is more efficient, cleaner and takes less space on the road than any of the 300,000-plus cars that are currently registered and clogging our roads.