Navigating our road network is a nightmare for road users. The failures of effective traffic management cascade from the policymaking authorities to roadworks project managers and contractors, to public transport providers.
The government wants people to believe it is entirely in control of this crisis by spending tens of millions of taxpayers’ money to enable our road networks to cope with the ever-increasing number of cars on our roads.
Transport Minister Chris Bonett told parliament that the €700 million project to rebuild Malta’s roads was almost complete. He claims that 1,315 roads were built in the last six years.
When asked by Times of Malta to provide a list of these roads, the transport ministry argued that they could not do so, as the information requested would “substantially and unreasonably divert resources of the public authority from its other operations”. So, the managers of such a massive project do not have easily extractable data on how and where taxpayers’ money was spent.
If cars are to be reduced on our roads, it is logical that choices must be made to define who has priority using our roads
The government has not defined a clear and effective strategy to limit the number of cars on our roads in the context of obvious physical limitations and increasing noise and air pollution that adversely affects people’s health.
It is fallacious for policymakers to make people believe that they can have their cake and eat it.
If cars are to be reduced on our roads, it is logical that choices must be made to define who has priority in using our roads.
There is no doubt that the construction of new roads in the last decade has helped the flow of traffic in certain areas. But there is broad consensus that it has not mitigated the stress of road users as the number of cars keeps increasing at unsustainable rates.
One short-term way to ease the traffic chaos is to encourage and incentivise more people to use public transport. The free public transport strategy adopted a few years ago was a positive move but has not resolved the problem.
Unless these public transport inefficiencies are eliminated, public transport will continue to be used mainly by those who do not have other transport options.
While the state of our roads suffered from decades of neglect, road improvement projects in the last few years have been marred by bad project management, as evidenced by never-ending ongoing work, poor workmanship and lack of consideration to ease the stress on road users.
Residents in Mosta, Naxxar, Msida and Manikata, among others, have faced long delays in roadworks completion, often forcing drivers to use inadequate alternative routes through town and village centres.
It is time to try to devise a serious strategy to reduce the number of cars on our roads but this can only be done if commuters have efficient alternatives to use their own transport.
We have no choice but to increase the use of sea transport between coastal areas, a service which has tremendously helped commuting between the Three Cities to Valletta to Sliema. We simply have no choice but to promote safe cycling and other green alternatives.
And while introducing realistic short-to-medium-term alternatives, the government must find a way of dissuading people to use their vehicles, even if the move will certainly prove unpopular.
The present chaos on our roads results from policy failure cascading from the highest level of government. Effective solutions can only come if sensible strategies cascade down from policymakers to the road user.