Of carrots, sticks and car-free days

What were you doing on September 22? There's a fair chance that, like me, you were caught up in a long, frustrating traffic jam. All in the name of car-free day.

My children and I took the 9 a.m. bus from Sta Lucija to Valletta. The bus chugged away at a modest pace up to Blata l-Bajda. There we were greeted by swarms of vehicles, all snailing their way into Valletta.

Ten minutes later we were still outside Portes des Bombes. Incoming traffic from the Pietà side appeared to be in equally dire straits.

No traffic police were in sight, so I phoned 112 and explained the traffic situation. Possibly the policeman at the other end had taken quite some flak about this already because, in a tone suggesting rather frayed nerves, he answered rhetorically: "U allura?"

I sheepishly suggested that maybe the presence of some traffic police could help. The line went dead before I even had the time to thank him for any help that he might send our way.

Inch by inch our bus crawled into Valletta. At the bus terminus and City Gate I overheard many people talking about car-free day, sadly none in flattering terms.

Past City Gate, two lads were juggling and singing "Il coccodrillo come fa?" Their shirt caught my eye. It read "Car-Free Day".

I enquired about their connection to this day. They explained that they were part of a team employed to promote car-free day.

Further along Republic Street, their colleagues were dishing out green balloons, as one passer-by sarcastically put it, "to make up for suffering the traffic jam".

In a shop I asked the salesgirl how they were faring with car-free day. "I think more cars than usual are coming to Valletta because today they can come in for free," she replied. I blinked and must have appeared rather slow on the uptake as, with a benign smile, she added "'cause it's car-free day today".

I smiled back weakly and tried to explain to her the true, and by now apparently lost, meaning of this phrase.

Desperately I wanted to find somebody who'd put in a good word for this day. So I asked a complete stranger how she was faring. The stranger turned out to be Maria Sammut from Zejtun, who works in Valletta. Her tale wasn't uplifting. Usually her bus ride takes half an hour. On car-free day it took her a whole hour.

Having accomplished our Valletta mission, my children and I caught a bus back home. Outgoing traffic appeared to be moving at a much better pace than the incoming one. And I was glad to see that traffic police were now present at various car-choked crossroads.

On the bus a lady asked me whether I knew what the cars were being given for free. I thought it was rather a quaint joke until my mind registered the genuinely puzzled look on her face.

OK, so this year's car-free day has come and gone. But just in case anybody is thinking of organising another one next year I'd suggest the following fine-tuning to the whole affair.

Strange but true, some people actually thought that the slogan "car-free day" meant cars will be getting something for free. So just to do away with any ambiguity let's use clearer and stronger slogans, like: "Walkers' and Buses' day" or more strongly: "No Cars Day".

A diagnosis reveals why this car-free day deteriorated into a car-exhaust day. The most obvious cause is that most of us insisted on going to Valletta in our car, even though various parking spaces around and in Valletta were, on this day, off limits.

So while the demand for parking places remained practically the same their supply was severely reduced. Traffic jams were the inevitable consequence.

Why did commuters remain monogamously faithful to their four- wheelers? Basically, by nature, people are reluctant to change their habits, especially if the carrot and stick 'motivating' them to do so are not that big a deal. In my opinion this car-free day dangled hardly any carrot and applied even less stick.

Let's take the carrots dangled on car-free day: free balloons and free face painting when you finally make it to Valletta. These freebies may be good enough for the kids but not for mum and dad.

No, for grown-ups to take the bite at the carrot would have to come in the shape of easily available, frequent transport that swiftly takes you to your destination. Anything short of this will simply not lure drivers away from their steering wheel.

Also, many of us didn't bus it because we were being realistic. Past experience has taught us "li b'tal-linja ma jaqbillekx". For instance Maria Sammut said that on 'normal' days she gets turned down by many full-up buses before she eventually manages to get on one.

Buses from various towns are too few during rush hours and to boot they keep going through various towns before they take you to Valletta or Sliema, where many commuters work.

And so, if this is the service you get from buses on car-full days, commuters figure they'd fare much worse on car-free ones, when demand for buses would be higher.

To convince people to take the bus instead of their car you've got to improve public transport's reputation slowly but steadily. How do you do that? Starting now, central and local government should start organising more frequent and direct transport to and from Valletta and the Sliema/St Julian's area.

Also, especially during work rush hours, they should offer express transport, which stops in very few locations on the way to its destination. To make all this feasible I believe mini-buses need to be introduced to service smaller towns. A public transport system of good repute is the plainest carrot needed to entice commuters away from their cars.

With a good reputation in place, come car-free day the authorities would still need to rope in many more buses than normally employed and to advertise this fact on the media before D-Day arrives. In this way commuters would be reassured that, at the very least, bussing it will be just as convenient as going by car, with the added advantage that you can read the newspaper while being chauffeured to work. An appetising carrot, indeed...

Now for the stick. I'm not going to propose that all those who use their car get caned on their behind. But something needs to unstick our behinds from our car seats. In this year's car-free day, commuters were allowed to drive up to Valletta's periphery. So driven by over-optimism, many did just that, hoping to clinch a parking space there.

To persuade us not to turn up in Valletta in our toy cars, I really think that the cut-off points should be Pietà and Blata l-Bajda. This would mean that, if you want to use your car, you first have to drive up to these two places, somehow find a rare parking place there, and then catch the bus anyway.

Given this scenario, many appraising commuters would conclude "li b'tal-linja issa jaqbillek zgur". Of course, Valletta residents would be allowed to go in and out of the city in their cars. And this concession could be extended to the over-60s and disabled persons, too.

A different type of stick would be to slap an environmental 'fee' of say Lm1 on cars entering Valletta. (I can see you coming after me with a stick right now). The downside of this monetary stick is that it is cumbersome to implement.

You'd need to have various fee collectors at each city entry point and they'd have to issue some sort of permit for cars to stick on their windscreens. Cars queuing up to pay may cause long jams, but hopefully the Lm1 would deter many from using their car.

This year's car-free day will unfortunately be remembered for all the wrong reasons: stifling, interminable traffic jams, lo-o-o-ng delays, missed appointments and for the cloud of exhaust that mushroomed over many roads, particularly in the Floriana and Valletta periphery area.

As my son bluntly put it: this was not a car-free day but a car-exhaust day. He also declared that one should never go to Valletta on a car-free day.

Maybe if most of us are driven to this same desperate conclusion, next year's car-free day will be a perfect one simply because everybody will make it a "Stay at home day". Unfortunately this would also mean a "Dead Valletta Day".

We don't have to be so apocalyptic but everything takes time, and as you know carrots can't be rushed, so we do have to start growing the needed carrots and sticks now. I'm sure that if we put our heads together we can come up with lots more appetising carrots and effective sticks.

Can you propose any? Do write and let us know. If we get our carrots and sticks right, next year we will surely have a real car-free day...