I am at my desk reading an article in Times of Malta about this morning’s traffic jam in Santa Venera, after I just spent two hours being part of the problem. Yes, I was part of the traffic, not stuck in traffic.
If every week the number of cars on our roads increases by more than 100 vehicles, how can we expect anything less other than a proportionate and continuous increase in congestion until the root of the issue is resolved? The problem is that the stock of cars is increasing faster than our infrastructure can handle, now or ever.
If we want less congestion, we need to either reduce the number of car users at any given moment or increase the volume of roads. There is a limit to road capacity and a cost (financial, aesthetic and physical) to increasing the stock of roads, so let’s focus on reducing the stock of vehicles on the road instead. Consider that in the period from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, the stock of passenger cars increased by a net value of 108 per week. We are currently moving towards gridlock, and we’re moving fast. Let’s assume that road usage of vehicles is increasing at a similar rate; if we want to stop traffic from worsening, we need to find levers that will, at minimum, halt this flow of stock and, at best, reverse it.
I won’t go into the details of what these levers can be, but this is not a new problem, and there are tried and tested solutions; we’re not the first city to have 500,000 people living in 300 square kilometres. Any talk of improving the efficiency of our traffic system, such as AI-powered traffic direction to maximise road capacity, is secondary.
Yes, we always want to maximise efficiency, but that will not solve the problem. The primary solution can only be one that controls the quantity of vehicles on the road, keeping them below a certain threshold. Any solution aimed at efficiency is simply to adjust the level of the threshold, but a threshold must be set and controlled, nonetheless.
Can you imagine what Malta would look like without any private cars? You’d start your day with a five-to-10-minute walk (breathing fresh air, rather than choking on fumes) to your closest bus station. Buses would run on time (because they’re no longer stuck in traffic), so you’d time your walk to be able to wait no more than a minute or two at the bus stop.
Your trip (on average 10km) would only take 30 minutes, assuming that the average speed of a bus is about 20km/hr (yes, the bus needs to stop multiple times, but it will no longer be stuck in traffic). Your walk from the bus stop to work would again take about five to 10 minutes. You would be walking on a pavement because the road is no longer lined with parked cars. By pavement I’m referring to the type you find abroad – the ones that can fit a stroller and another person side-by-side.
Sure, we would still need some private vehicles for certain trips, like a family trip to the beach or to the mall on the weekend. We would still need cabs to take us home after a boozy dinner or when it’s
late and inconvenient to catch the bus. The point is any urban mobility system must be multi-modal with mass transportation vehicles at the core.
If today 80% of all trips take place in a private vehicle, we need a future where we reduce this number to something like 20%.
At the end of the day, the choice is ours. We can build any future we want; we just need the political will to do so.
If we want to see action at a political level, it is our responsibility to show our leaders where our values lie. On that note, maybe we should finally stop finding scapegoats for our traffic woes and instead be the change we want to see.
How about we try using alternatives to the private vehicle once in a while? How about we ask for inconvenient but necessary restrictions on the private vehicle; like the introduction of paid parking or the removal of the subsidy on fuel (and reallocate the financial resource to developing other mobility systems). Until then, we are not stuck in traffic, we are the traffic.
Sebastian Ripard is managing director of Rides & Eats.