Mass transport won’t work without ‘punitive measures’, Clyde Caruana warns

Updated 2.57pm with PN reaction below.

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said he would only start believing that a mass transit system in Malta is possible when both parties agree to penalise car use through ‘punitive measures’.

Caruana was speaking during a debate with finance shadow minister Adrian Delia on Popolin on Tuesday evening.

Caruana had expressed his scepticism about a mass transport system during a Times of Malta pre-budget event last week, warning that the proposals on the table “could royally screw” Malta.

Days later, Robert Abela said an initial €6 billion proposal had been slashed to €2.8 billion, now incorporating both underground and overground routes.

However, Caruana reiterated his doubts on Tuesday, insisting that any mass transport proposal can only be feasible if accompanied by measures pushing people to ditch their cars.

Caruana argued that his scepticism is not just about how much it will cost to build the transport system in the first place, but also the long-term expense of maintaining and subsidising it, adding that he is yet to be “numerically convinced that the project makes sense”.

Moreover, Caruana said, the project faces an uphill struggle unless authorities also introduce measures to disincentivise car use.

“Someone needs to have the courage to tell the people that they have to leave their cars at home,” Caruana said. “What is the metro or tram supposed to do, run without passengers?”.

“We need to tell people that (if you drive) you won’t have anywhere to park, or you will need to pay to park, or licence costs will explode.”

Last week, Caruana had ruled out the introduction of such measures in the budget, describing them as political “suicide”.

Replying to Delia’s suggestion that both parties can band together to “take the tough decisions that may cost votes,” Caruana agreed.

“When there is agreement on both sides to tell people that car licence fees will rise, parking will be more difficult, you will have to pay to park, then I will start believing that projects such as this can be possible. In the absence of this, I don’t believe it,” Caruana said.

“We are agreeing that, to get to that point, there need to be punitive measures,” Caruana said.

“Rather than punitive, they need to be choices that change how we travel,” Delia said euphemistically, prompting Caruana’s wry reply that “we shouldn’t dip our words in sugar”.

Delia, a former transport shadow minister, agreed that mass transit would only work if people stopped using their cars. Stopping short of describing measures as punitive, Delia said citizens would ultimately bear the brunt of inaction, unless both parties jointly agreed to take "life-changing decisions".

Earlier in the debate, Delia argued that Monday's budget had offered little in the way of alternatives to car use, such as measures for more frequent buses and telework. These measures "have to go hand-in-hand" with incentives for people to give up their cars, Delia said.

The government has so far shied away from introducing any measures to disincentivise car use, with Transport Minister Chris Bonett ruling out the move when rolling out the government’s traffic plan earlier this year.

PN slams Caruana's remarks

In a reaction to Caruana's latest comments, the Nationalist Party said on Wednesday that the government was showing that it did not believe that people would be able to choose the best means of transport, if they actually had a real choice.

"Caruana believes that for a mass transport system to succeed, those who use the car must be punished," shadow minister Toni Bezzina observed. 

Bezzina noted that the Budget had not provided a single cent for a study into a mass transport system.

Meanwhile, the government had still not implemented any of the measures that Transport Minister Chris Bonett announced months ago to supposedly reduce car use. 

"The only disincentive people have not to use their car remains the fact that everyone is stuck in traffic," Bezzina said.

He said the Minister for Finance was twisting Robert Abela’s arm not to invest in a system that could actually solve the traffic problem.

"Every time he speaks on the subject, he confirms that no one in the government has a clear solution to this issue," Bezzina said.