I refer to the article by Antione Zammit from Studjurban, entitled ‘Embracing the Slow Streets Project’ (August 10).
While subscribing completely to his key points, I cannot but ponder how such slow streets can be made possible without ensuring proper transportation towards the centre of towns excluding the use of private vehicles. This is key given the number of businesses that are located within the centre of our towns.
The only solution is to rely on fast, reliable and predicable public transportation, which we still do not have.
The concept of giving back the city to the citizens is nothing new. It was a concept that the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre passionately sustained in his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville (Right to the City).
David Harvey illustrated in detail how Lefebvre denounced the use of capitalism through debt-financing, a simple but effective speculation process that allows wealthy contractors or consortiums to get loans equivalent to the difference between the debt incurred to build an edifice and its present market value.
This allows them to go immediately onto the next project as long as the value of the property in general keeps rising, allowing for more capital from banks so long as the gearing is less than the overall value of the building.
These manoeuvres would automatically and continually increase the value of the property market, meaning that a few sales would clear most of the debt, and the contractors amass large wealth.
Buyers, on the other hand, would be laden with the debt and have to pay more at every stage of increasing property prices.
This method was used to privatise and then urbanise swathes of land by Haussmann (1850-60) in Paris and by Robert Moses (1960-70) in New York, by taking land cheap and then constructing large iconic soulless buildings, one after the other, stamping out small neighbourhoods or green areas to create massive edifices.
In architectural terms, their actions may seem to be grandiose but, in fact, nature is kicked out, construction is done simply to create capital and profit, and, in the meantime, the population is confined to live in a world of building blocks, perimetered by roads, and ensuring there is no sense of self.
In other words, exactly where Malta is right now. When the prime minister, in October 2021, told the country that we need a metro as a solution to our congested roads, there seemed to be some hope that, finally, planning, future proofing and putting citizens first were holding ground and that we needed to dissuade citizens to use cars less and opt for public transport.
Unfortunately, ARUP were paid off to use their brand name to sell an underground metro solution in a country that will never have a population large enough to justify such a project, the government proving earlier criticism of this initiative as simply electoral spin.
Last November, obviously, this €6 billion, 20-year project was unceremoniously ditched, after everyone had well forecasted that such an underground metro was a tower of Babel – grandiose but useless, senseless, technically unfeasible, environmentally destructive and unsound, and leading to nowhere near a solution for our congested roads.
It can be done in less than five years and with less than half the original budget proposed- Karl Camilleri
What is required is an MRT (mass rapid transit) that is in our roads, has its own uninterrupted lanes and goes everywhere. This is the solution that ARUP have proposed in every country they consulted (surprise, surprise) because it gives choice to the users for either a comfortable, reliable public transport solution or a drive in congested roads.
Such an MRT could be a Bus Rapid Transit system or a Light Rail Transit. I would not consider a monorail because it would not solve the congestion problem, that is, force our citizens to choose between their private vehicles or this fast public transportation system.
Furthermore it makes more noise pollution, is very difficult to maintain and, thus, creates a more stressful environment altogether, with congestion below and noise above.
The MRT would need to go everywhere, and not just 25 stops, as the metro had proposed, and pass through all the centres of every town and village in Malta.
It needs to be equitable and ubiquitous, so that everyone, anywhere, with a couple changeovers, can go and enjoy our city centres devoid of traffic, with just the occasional public transport passing through.
The rest would be reached with a few minutes of walking, or cycling, which would do us no harm.
With a few car parks situated at strategic locations, anyone can join the network, even by car in the first leg, but, then, do most of the travelling by public transport.
This solution has been taken up a number of European, American and Asian cities, such as Nantes, Strasbourg, Hannover, Birmingham-West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Calgary, Pittsburgh, Istanbul, Ankara, Xiamen, Rio De Janeiro and Tunis, to mention a few.
These are now proven examples that this solution is an investment in the long-term viability and revitalisation of entire neighbourhoods and city centres and factual illustrations that, when political will is geared for the long-term good of the entire population, not of the business class, then the benefits are guaranteed.
So why is such a proven solution not being adopted in Malta?
There are various studies that show it can be done in less than five years and with less than half the original budget proposed but the present strategy is to continue to build roads, when all these do is to attract more cars and create more congestion and traffic.
Studjurban could be, hopefully, a small seed, if it succeeds at all, to generate more determination by Maltese citizens to have what they deserve, namely pedestrianised city centres coupled with, and serviced by, a mass rapid transport system within the entire island.
Dr Karl Camilleri is deputy director of the Institute for Business Management and Commerce, MCAST. An engineer by profession, his areas of research are transportation, behavioural economics and structural equation modelling.