NIMBY rules

For around 40 years, if not longer, a plan to deal with the traffic that chokes the centre of Attard each morning has been sitting on the planners’ desks.

Now that it has been retrieved and looks set to be put in motion, all hell has broken loose.

The idea is to construct a bypass – just like the many others which have alleviated traffic congestion in towns and villages across Malta, from Mosta to Qrendi, to name just two. But NIMBY has struck again. NIMBY stands for Not In My Back Yard, only in this case Not In My Front Garden would probably be more fitting.

The residents of a street with no traffic at all and facing an ODZ area are understandably up in arms over plans to turn their quiet road into a highway with fumes, noise and, potentially, danger. So they are opposing the proposal.

But in such cases, the needs of the wider

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community must take precedence. The wider community has been forced to queue every morning until the traffic gets through the road’s narrow bend. The rush-hour traffic – along with the mayhem it involves – spreads throughout the other streets of Attard, all the way up to the residence of the US ambassador.

Things then get worse when it’s raining and more people use cars. Up to a few years ago, rain turned the streets into rivers but that has now been addressed. People have long questioned how bypasses in other town and village cores have been successful in alleviating traffic while similar measures have remained seemingly impossible in Attard. Now they know there is a silent yet hard-working lobby blocking any such projects and probably terrorizing any government that tries to do anything about the situation. And politicians – being politicians – always succumb to the threat of votes withheld at the next election. The people who would be affected by the bypass have come up with all sorts of novel ideas to alleviate traffic jams without having to resort to a bypass, but the suggestions they have out forward – including a tunnel – are ludicrous and impracticable.

Yes, perhaps we do have a preference for roundabouts and bypasses, but a bypass is cheaper, quicker and more cost-effective in the short term.

It is inconceivable, in this day and age, that a minority – a hidden one at that – can block the needs of the majority. It is inconceivable that people have to waste time and fuel waiting in traffic when they could have an easier start to their day.

Our advice to the government and the transport ministry is to get on with it and to start the preparatory works that will bring relief to so many drivers, and even to the Attard residents themselves.