Tying up with my previous letter (TMID, November 17) regarding the morning thriving chaos at the Marsa traffic lights (near the Shipbuilding), I have been given the following pictures to show. This is an opportunity for the local authorities to see that the situation is not pleasant at all. These pictures highlight the precarious situation which most of the drivers face every single day.

As one may see from these pictures, the morning situation is frightful, to say the least. As I wrote in my previous letter, the “timings” are not yet synchronised.

I must make it clear that I am not criticising the work of the police officers, who are there most of the week doing their duty, but simply presenting a difficulty that many drivers encounter each and every morning.

What I am trying to suggest here is that the policemen on duty must be more careful to time their traffic orders with that of the lights earlier on. There is also a difference in the way different policemen on duty operate.

There are some who stop the cars in the first two lanes and allow the last lane (the lane next to BIM Ltd) to pass; others stop all the lanes to allow the traffic flowing from the left (coming down from the downhill which connects Santa Lucia with Marsa).

Thus, all these “stops” create big difficulties for the drivers coming from the main street, precisely because we are caught in the

gutter.

Maybe I pretended too much that, after my first letter on the matter, things would have started to change. Unfortunately, this was not the case. What are the authorities waiting for to try to correct what is wrong – at least for us drivers?

I must also bring up the bus lane saga once again. Is it not true that this lane is not serving its purpose? Do not all of us want to arrive on time to our work place? Do the authorities really find it factual that many citizens use public transport?

By the way, does the law permit a bus-lane in a street which has only two other lanes? I am saying this because, coming from the Paola area, till the petrol station, we have the bus-lane plus three lanes. Then, though the bus-lane continues, the three lanes for other cars become two.

I still cannot figure out why we do things just to try to be like other countries. We cannot – we are unique!

Well, this is my two cents for the day. I hope that it will help improve the situation.

Claudio Laferla

Tarxien