McDonald's fund deployment of traffic police in Gharghur

McDonald’s will be funding the deployment of traffic police currently engaged in facilitating traffic flow during peak hours outside the newly-opened McDrive outlet in Gharghur, a spokesperson for the company has told this newspaper.

Amid widespread criticism from commuters that the new McDonald’s outlet was the prime cause for heavy traffic congestion at the roundabout junction of Triq tal-Balal and Triq Santa Katerina in Gharghur, the company said that it would be helping to pay for proper traffic control in the area in an attempt to improve the traffic flow.

McDonald’s said that it was “committed to ensuring the congestion is not aggravated” by the presence of the outlet, with the hope that “customers, residents and commuters at large are not unduly inconvenienced”.

The Gharghur branch was officially opened on 7 April, with the eatery capable of seating 172 patrons. It is the tenth McDonald’s outlet to be opened in Malta, but the new addition gained unwanted scrutiny after widespread public reports claimed that the drive-thru had intensified traffic congestion in the area.

MaltaToday last week revealed inconsistencies in the conclusions of a Traffic Impact Study (TIS) carried out for the new outlet.
The TIS, which was carried out by Transport Malta and presented in January 2013 prior to the approval of the outlet, stated that the Gharghur roundabout, located just metres away from the McDrive, was already failing to keep up with traffic flows.

By contrast, it deemed that the increased traffic generated by the drive-thru would represent “a relatively small part of the total traffic” in the area.

Contacted during the week, Transport Malta claimed that works on the roundabout were required but that this was mainly due to network traffic growth and not as a direct result of the McDonald’s outlet.

However, within hours of publishing the article, the MaltaToday Facebook page was swamped with comments from the public, with hundreds of people expressing their frustration and anger at the situation.

Almost all of the comments confirmed that the outlet had indeed created heavy traffic congestion problems.

“It was already a big traffic problem… now it’s a disaster” one comment read. Another disgruntled commuter simply said: “Too much. There is always too much” in a clear reference to the traffic issues which Malta faces. Another person said that she had finished work duty at 8pm “dead tired, only to find traffic at a standstill”.

Transport Malta and MEPA were the prime targets in a forum which was shared by dozens of people. The authorities were widely criticised for the lack of proper planning, while even McDonald’s menu could not avoid the line of fire.

On their part, McDonald’s said that the company was “compliant with all legislation and regulations” and that “its operations respect the parameters contained in assessments compiled independently by the authorities”.