I have just managed to get to my office after having been stuck in an apocalyptic traffic jam that stretched from the Regional Road "gas" roundabout through Rue d'Argens to the Strand, Gzira. I was stuck for long enough to read through to page 13 of the day's issue of The Times, and to the article about changes in the Transport Authority board.
One might be entitled to hope that with a keen new minister giving encouragement, and a keen new chairman of the board, the idea might sink in that the job of the Transport Authority is to control transport and traffic. One might be said to control traffic by bringing it to a complete standstill, but somehow I doubt that it is what the legislator had in mind. The public might be better served by the authority ensuring that traffic is allowed to flow relatively easily.
May I venture to suggest that in considering this possibility, the board keeps these points in mind:
No road should be closed without an alternative diversion clearly in mind.
No major arterial road should be closed during working hours, to avoid traffic jams, loss of working hours, and wastage of expensive fuel.
The job of the traffic police and the warden service is to assist the free flow of traffic by minimising stoppage, and mobile control and education of drivers.
They should act as educators and facilitators: not lying in wait behind walls to act as fund-raisers by fining car drivers (but not buses or heavy goods vehicles) for minor infringements.
Traffic police should be mobile and not stationary; their function should be one of prevention and not entrapment. A policeman who is moving in traffic is a visible deterrent, and one who might occasionally catch a few of the many selfish and reckless drivers who haunt our roads.
Traffic in Malta drives (or should drive) on the left. A car driving in the middle of the carriageway takes up twice the available road space and encourages the dangerous practise of overtaking on the inside lane. Heavy vehicles should never drive in the outer lanes.
The practice of diluting diesel fuel with paraffin, or fiddling with diesel fuel pumps to increase the fuel flow, in the wrong belief that it gives higher power, must be discouraged. It does not increase power, but does raise carcinogenous emissions. A mobile policeman could stop vehicles emitting smoke and instruct them to report to a police-controlled VRT testing station.
Standards of road repair procedures should be established and enforced. It is ludicrous that newly repaired roads are not steam-rollered but left with spring-destroying huge bumps. Roads that have just been repaired nowadays break up without the assistance of rain, and it is obvious that the mix of aggregate and binding agent is incorrect.
There are many other points that could be brought up about traffic and traffic control, but if just a few of these I have mentioned were to be considered, many of Malta's 270,000 hard done driving population would get to work in a much happier and productive state.