If you’re given a choice between spending 40 minutes stuck in traffic on a bus or spending 40 minutes stuck in your car, which would you choose?

In an ideal world, everyone would opt for a bus and that would be the end of traffic forever and ever. Streets would be filled with children playing boċċi and skipping rope and occasionally waving to a bus driver cruising past.

But this is 2021, not 1951, and there are more than 400,000 cars on the island. Very soon, there’ll be more cars than people.

So, green reasons aside, why should anyone take the bus when it takes the same time to arrive at one’s destination, if not more when factoring in the waiting time on the bus stop? Why should anyone want to cram and jostle with other commuters, most of whom keep their mask hanging under their chin, if there is a better option? What’s the point?

There is no point at all. Bus lanes only make a marginal difference in a country where every other street is blocked by a crane and where children learn how to spot ‘diversion’ signs even before they can spell their names.

Therefore, the idealist plan to try and get everyone to use the bus has to be wrapped up and everyone needs to move to Plan B. And, by that, I do not mean embarking on campaigns to get everyone to cycle. Forget it. It’s the most perilous undertaking.

Even the most diehard Dutch cyclist would baulk at the very idea of setting his two wheels on the Maltese roads. Who wants to cycle in lanes that vanish in thin air just when you hit a main road? And who wants to be considered as a pesky nuisance, to be mudguarded out of the way, squashed against a wall?

The only way people will ever feel safe on bikes, is if a) there is less traffic and b) if bicycles are given absolute priority. Both are doable, depending on one single premise: fewer roads. Fewer roads equals fewer cars, equals less traffic, equals cycling-friendly streets.

How can there be fewer roads and fewer cars? By dangling the ‘save-your-precious-time’ carrot stick. I’d rather use my car than the bus if it takes the same commuting time but, by Jove, I would certainly use a form of transport that would reduce a 40-minute commute to a mere 10-minute one.

For example, why is the government not considering a light rail transit system? An LRT is similar to a traditional tram but can take more commuters, is much faster and works on an exclusive right of way. It would give us the possibility of 30 minutes less time spent swearing behind a steering wheel, now not in 20 years’ time.

Despite what the Labour Party street billboards are claiming, our children’s future on this island looks pretty bleak- Kristina Chetcuti

Unlike a metro – which is a heavy rail system and which necessitates tunnel digging – all it needs is an above-ground set-up. This system should bring about the end of congestions, of road rage and of excessive pollution because everyone would save time.

I am not familiar with the details of the government’s proposal of the metro revealed last week. For now, it seems, we only have a fancy brochure.

I am, however, familiar with the Nationalist Party’s proposal in 2017, compiled by transport experts who had suggested an extensive combination of hybrid forms of transport to solve the traffic problem once and for all.

Back in 2017, that was received by sneers and jeers from the Labour government. Now, eureka, with an election round the corner, the same government is taking it seriously. Let’s hope it’s not because someone’s eyes twinkled at the potential of some corrupt deal to line their pockets.

Transport solutions is a topic that is only wheeled out whenever there’s an election looming. Either that or because the government wants a national distraction.

Abortion, cannabis and prostitution are similar other topics, brought up when there’s a need to get everyone in a huff and a puff to forget some corruption scandal.

On February 22, 2016, Daphne Caruana Galizia put up a photo of a Panama hat on her blog. It was the country’s first taste of the rampant corruption she was about to start exposing. She knew that she would be hit with claims of jealous plotting to bring the government down. But nothing could be further from the truth, she said.

“I am just tired of seeing this country lurch from mess to mess because of the Labour Party and its decisions, in opposition and in government, and I’ve reached the stage where I honestly can’t take any more of it. None of this is new or interesting anymore and, like increasing numbers of people, I would simply like to live my life without waking up every day wondering what the Labour Party is hatching and plotting next. People are fed up to the gills.”

She was right. Twenty months after that post, she was killed. Next week, it will be the fourth anniversary of her assassination and not only are we still a long way off from justice being served, but the country has started reaping the results of the impunity and corruption. Despite what the Labour Party street billboards are claiming, our children’s future on this island looks pretty bleak.

So, even if you are fed up to the gills, even if you are drained, feeling hopeless or helpless and just want to completely switch off, please do make some time this Saturday, October 16, to attend the vigil in front of the law courts in Republic Street, Valletta at 7.30pm. Malta is our home. We deserve to wake up to a better place.