TMID Editorial: Beating the traffic
As the corridors of the government's and the Labour Party's highest offices no doubt chatter with some degree of alarm about an election poll published yesterday which showed that the Nationalist Party now holds a lead of something like 12,000 votes,
As the corridors of the government's and the Labour Party's highest offices no doubt chatter with some degree of alarm about an election poll published yesterday which showed that the Nationalist Party now holds a lead of something like 12,000 votes, many will be questioning how it has come to this.
It's clear that there are a number of issues which are affecting the day-to-day lives of people, and many members of the public - and no doubt many within the government and the PL - will isolate the constant, daily battle with traffic jams as one of those issues.
Traffic has been a problem in Malta for a long-time. With 440,163 licensed vehicles on Malta's streets as at the end of last June, it's a given that this tiny, car-crazy island will have a traffic problem.
So that begs the question: how do you go about beating the traffic?
The Labour Party's answer was - at least in the Joseph Muscat era - pumping hundreds of millions into key capital infrastructural projects. €700 million was spent in 7 years as the government mounted a whirlwind campaign to improve both residential roads and build new, sprawling junctions to address traffic bottlenecks like in Marsa, Kappara, Attard and, more recently, outside the Malta International Airport.
And in fact these traffic projects have reduced traffic in those particular areas - but at the current rate that vehicles are making it to Malta's roads, it's a question mark as to how long they will remain effective before reaching full capacity.
Because ultimately that's what it boils down to: the cold, hard truth that Malta has too many cars on its roads.
If the number of vehicles is going to continue increasing, then the impact of major road projects is not going to last all that long. Space in Malta is finite - the country cannot simply build another lane in 10 years, because there isn't the space for it. Even now, in some places projects have simply shifted the traffic bottleneck to other areas which are decidedly more difficult to address.
Several measures of varying degrees of creativity have been bandied around.
Some out there have said that Malta's minimum age should increase; others say that those reaching a certain age should have their licence taken away. A suggestion thrown around a lot is that specific days should be assigned for vehicles based on their number plates - say those ending with an odd number can be on Malta's roads on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only, and those ending with even numbers can be driven on the remaining days, for example.
That suggestion was shot down by Transport Minister Chris Bonett in an interview with The Sunday Times of Malta last week - which is probably for the best. A system like that would simply increase the social class divide: those with money can simply buy another car so they'll have one number plate with an even number and another with an odd, while the rest will have to slave away on a bus for half the week.
There can be discussions at great length, for days on end about measures to decrease car use, but at core, no such discussion or idea is even viable if there isn't a realistic alternative.
The current bus system is unlikely to be able to cope if, say, 10,000 people decide to leave their car in their garage tomorrow morning - not to mention the quality of life impact when one has to spend an hour packed into a bus for a trip which could take 15 to 20 minutes in a car.
Bonett in his interview spoke of the need to capitalise on alternative transport modes: ferries or rapid bus transits, for example. Cycling can also feature, but it's disappointing that a National Cycle Network which was announced by Bonett's predecessor Aaron Farrugia doesn't appear to have gotten into the gear yet.
The fact is that there is no silver bullet to beating traffic - in fact, today's problem is one which the country needed to start planning for a decade ago, not now.
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