Malta’s glorious Coast Road – from a cyclist’s perspective. For the sake of this video, I used all pavements and zebra crossing detours, passages, etc as indicated by the signs. And why aren’t the zebra crossings at least placed at the actual roundabouts on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th exit if I want to turn back, instead of in useless side streets? And why isn’t there a one continuous cycle lane? They’re too risky to use because of the rumble strips and because of the frequent shared pavements. Many cyclists are actually not using the cycle lane, especially cyclists with road bikes as they have thinner tyres because of the never-ending rumble strips. Many are using the road instead as it’s more straight forward and without any interruptions. And you can’t blame them. Blame those who designed the road instead. Going over the rumble strips is much more rough than cycling on a rough countryside, and you can easily slip and risk having a very bad accident especially if you’re on a road bike and especially if they’re wet after a rainy day. I think “rumble slips” would be a better term for the “rumble strips”.
Some captions in the video seem to have got a bit cropped out because of YouTube’s image stabilisation that I used to make the video less shaky. Sorry about that. The captions/sentences are still comprehensible throughout the video.
UPDATE 3rd February 2016: If anyone’s interested I’ve uploaded the full raw video of the Coast Road here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdmBbclpCw4
14 Comments
Some captions in the video seem to have got a bit cropped out because of YouTube's image stabilisation that I used to make the video less shaky. Sorry about that. The captions/sentences are still comprehensible throughout the video.
Rumble strips should have been placed on the outside
Wow great and I was looking forward to using my new bike on this road. I had high hopes that in 2015, they would start thinking a bit more about cyclists in Malta, given the huge traffic problems there are here..
If it ain't Dutch, it ain't much.
Bicycle lanes are a waste of space. Grow up and get a car.
That is one of the worst new bicycle lanes I've ever seen. Seems to be meant to discourage cycling. Seriously.
kemm tgergru triq bhal din
+Pawlu C how safe did you feel?
who the hell build this road a scarpone!
why the hell would you even bother riding your bike on this disaster of a bike lane! seriously who built this crap!
I was actually looking forward to try out this road since I've recently started taking cycling seriously (mtb). Those rumble strips are already putting me off just looking at them, then there's the ridiculousness of the starts and finishes of bike lanes…
Absolutely dreadful. I was considering moving to Malta back in 2015 but unfortunately I would not be able to continue my passion for cycling while living in Malta ☹️.
Excellent video. Another issue is that the cycle lanes are no longer cleaned. There are small stones and objects everywhere, making it very hard for race bike users to use them. Has this not been raised by anyone? Does one contact Transport Malta?
Wow, and this was 7 years ago. Comments from 7 years ago complaining of Malta's traffic problem, and yet Malta has stayed the same, or even worse. Maybe some extra bike lanes, but honestly, they are so inconsistent, that no one really uses them. Malta's just gotten more filled with cars.