Short-term, short-sighted solutions

Driving down some of our recently widened roads might remind some of the opening sequence of CHiPs (the 80’s TV show), which featured two California Highway Patrol officers cruising down multiple-lane highways on their motorcycles.

The government has embarked on several of these projects (all at once, one might add), and the three-lane road is quickly becoming the standard. But wider roads bring with them new challenges and new dangers, and some will argue that this tiny island of ours does not need autobahns all around.

The aim of these road-widening projects is to improve traffic flow. The problem is that this will only work until the next bottleneck, something we certainly have no shortage of. In some cases the authorities are ‘fixing’ these bottlenecks, sometimes by resorting to expropriation and sometimes by sacrificing trees (who needs those?). But some bottlenecks just cannot be fixed, and this renders the roadwidening process in those areas pointless.

Then there are three-lane roundabouts – something that Maltese drivers seem to be incapable of comprehending. Yes, there have

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been efforts to educate drivers about how to choose and switch lanes but, from what we can see, these have been largely unsuccessful.

This is not to mention how hard it has become to drive out from an exit. It was hard enough with two lanes, but gauging the right moment when to drive out of an exit when facing three lanes of oncoming traffic is like playing Russian roulette.

Some might say that at least this administration is doing something about the traffic problem, “unlike previous Nationalist governments.” But we believe that the efforts we are witnessing now are short-sighted, short-term solutions.

This is only a way of dealing with the everincreasing volume of cars on the roads, when what we need is a national solution to actually reduce the number of cars on our roads.

If anything, this is a sign that there is currently no plan to change the economic model that is creating a demand for tens of thousands of foreign workers, more buildings and more vehicles on the roads.

If there was ever a good time to invest in a mass public transport system, it would definitely be now.

Cars are a comfortable and convenient luxury so the solution is to make an even more convenient means of transport – one that does not get caught up in traffic and where you do not need to worry about parking once you get to your destination. This is not even about thinking outside the box – other countries have been using trams for centuries now.

When the PN had presented a light railway proposal some months ago (even though it was not properly researched) the government had ridiculed it. In the meantime the country is discussing how to spend upwards of a billion euro on an undersea tunnel between Malta and Gozo – a project that is needed by a few thousand people.

We are not saying that those few thousands who cross the channel daily should be forgotten – every effort should be made to make things easier for them. But we feel that investing in an efficient nationwide mass transport system that would not only be used by the Maltese but also by the tens of thousands of foreign workers and the hundreds of thousands of tourists that visit the island each year should be seen as a greater priority.