If you see officials waving down your vehicle on the side of the road this week then don’t be alarmed as they are from the Land Transport Authority (L.T.A.) and are conducting a survey. 

The authority has alerted the travelling public that due to ongoing consultancy services to undertake traffic counting on the primary road network they are on several sites carrying out the survey.

L.T.A. says in a public notice that the origin and destination survey will kick off from the south west coast road heading to Aelipata south coast road on Thursday to Saturday this week. 

It will then continue on to the Apia central cross road and covering the main east coast road on Thursday to Saturday next week. 

“Vehicle traffic travelling from and to the above mention locations will be randomly stopped and given questionnaires that will assist with the authority’s survey for future projects,” said L.T.A.

Furthermore it asked motorists to adhere to police officers on sites and safety signs in the vicinity saying the authority is working to improve the safety of road network. 

According to L.T.A.’s annual report for 2018-2019 it recorded more new private vehicles in Upolu of 2713 and 102 for Savaii for the period. 

That does not include some 20,000 plus of renewed private vehicles. 

In terms of taxi there were only 361 new taxi in Upolu and 17 for Savaii while the total number of renewed taxi and total of 1600 plus renewed taxi. 

There were only 12 new buses in Upolu and none for Savaii for the financial year and a total of 370 renew buses. 

The vehicle data for 2018-2019 noted a total of 25,793 private, taxi, buses and others recorded by the L.T.A. 

The safety of buses and negligence driving from private owners and business vehicles in the past two months has recorded some fatalities of close to 10 deaths for last month alone. 

One man died from Safa’atoa Lefaga on Tuesday this week after a truck he was travelling in flipped and crashed. 

L.T.A. noted that for 2018-2019 there were a total of 2,685 traffic offence notices issued by the authority before its transition to hand over traffic to Police took effect.