The other day I drove (what else?) past the yellow giants in Attard. They were digging up the ground one last devastating time. Olive and citrus trees, soil made dark and giving by generations of humus, half-grown crops, rubble walls, country lanes – all sacrificed at the altar of the Central Link project.
You’d have to be profoundly insensitive not to care. The sight, sound, and smell of centuries of rural tradition putting up a hopeless resistance to the machines does ugly things to the heart and gut. There’s something dystopian about it that makes you want to turn up your car radio to a tuneless deafness, and to speed up.
And yet, all of it is necessary. In the circumstances, I see absolutely no alternative to the road-building and road-widening programme this government has embarked on. Destructive? Infinitely. Lucrative public contracts lining the pockets of private interests? Certainly. The fact remains that the roadworks are a must.
Most people understand this instinctively, which is why Minister Ian Borg has enjoyed such wide popularity and now holds one of the ‘continuity’ portfolios. The rest tie themselves to trees, but they’re both in knots and misguided.
The argument is simple. The population is growing at a rate which is among the highest in the EU. That growth is largely down to the kind of inbound migration associated with a thriving economy and job market. Three million tourists a year add to the numbers. It’s the kind of growth which means more affluence generally, and which makes ever greater demands on an already-heaving infrastructure, of which roads are a key part.
In the way, apart from the trees and crops, are three fallacies. The first is that the projects will only make the situation worse, because more and wider roads will ultimately mean more cars and fresh cycles of infrastructural shortage.
There is some truth to this, in the sense that better roads encourage car use. Still, what are the alternatives? We could, I suppose, just leave things as they are and let the misery pile up. Besides, it’s untrue to say that the new roads are not an improvement. Kappara Junction and Buqana Road, for example, are infinitely more manageable than they used to be, and I’m sure we’ll soon be able to say the same of Marsa and the Santa Luċija junction. When it all clogs up again eventually, we’ll build some more. It’s what growth is all about.
There’s no getting around the fact that population growth and general affluence means more cars
The second fallacy taps into the canard of infinitely sustainable development. Now I wouldn’t wish to diss those who argue that there are alternatives to car use and that it’s government’s job to encourage them. The reasoning is sound, and more people cycling or walking or taking the bus would indeed help no end.
And yet, there’s no getting around the fact that population growth and general affluence means more cars, no matter how excellent the public transport and cyclable the cycling lanes. While alternative means of transport could do much to ease the problem, they would not change the basic equation.
Take car hire. I remember a time not so long ago when you could spot rental cars a mile off by the characteristic striped bars painted along the sides. Not that you’d see very many of them around: locals drove their own cars or took the bus, and most tourists were ferried around in coaches and taxis, or took the bus.
The rise and rise of independent travel has changed all of that. Increasingly, tourists tend to ‘explore the islands’ independently in rented cars, using GPS to find their way to what used to be, by our standards, secluded spots. In selfie capitals like St Peter’s Pool, enterprising farmers have hit on a bumper summer crop in the shape of parking space for the daily harvest of cars – come autumn, the fields are ploughed back to agriculture.
Car lease, too, has shot up, as it tends to do when a population becomes more mobile and transient. Cab and taxi companies have mushroomed, their car and van fleets an increasingly noticeable presence on the roads. I don’t see any of this going anywhere except up.
The third fallacy is that, ‘abroad’, solutions have been found that do away with the need for more and better roads. This is of course nonsense. Like many, I read my fair share of international newspapers and magazines. Bypass-this and highway-that are a constant battle fought by environmentalists everywhere, including in countries where cycling and public transport are second nature.
Switzerland, for example, has clockwork-sharp trains and buses and a cycling infrastructure that would put bowling lanes to shame. You might be pardoned for thinking that transport was not an issue, but you’d be wrong. Indeed, one of the standard yodels of the xenophobic Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is that migration – population growth, that is – leads to overcrowding on trains and buses and heavy environmental costs of roads.
Now if I were Swiss, the SVP would not be my natural choice. The way I see it is that there are more and more people in the world, that many of them want to travel for work or recreation or whatever other reason, and that is neither my brief nor my wish to try to stop them doing so.
I also understand, however, that the more of us there are the greater the demand, in this case on road infrastructure. While we could and probably should do all we can to find alternatives, we’re mostly just going to have to live with it.