ADT in for complete overhaul

The Malta Transport Authority (ADT) needs a complete overhaul, Transport Minister Austin Gatt told Parliament yesterday. Moving the authority's estimates, Dr Gatt said the time had come for a change of policies so that it would respond more to present-day needs and keep the citizen at the forefront of its activities. This required a culture change.

He said that the authority's main problem was it had various conflicting commercial interests. The problem emanates from the nature and development of transport policies and decisions, lack of traffic management and finding the delicate balance between the owner of a vehicle and the pedestrian and the public and private sector.

Dr Gatt said that Malta had one of the highest car to population ratio in the world and the biggest ratio of vehicles to kilometres. The number of vehicles is equal to the number of people over 18.

Malta was also unique in that few people make use of the public transport because there were never disincentives for those who regularly use their own means of private transport.

Congestion would not be solved by building more roads, as much as parking problems would not be solved by the building of car parks, as evidenced by the MCP car park and the park and ride. Valletta is still congested and nobody finds a place to park fir a few minutes.

Dr Gatt said that the time had also come to take a look at the authority's organisation which is tied to the nineties. It was born out of the licensing and testing department and remains tied to five directorates, which work with little or no coordination between them.

Again, the enforcement had lost its teeth because there is not a section which is responsible. There is no corporate culture and the authority does not acknowledge that its clients are the road users when its focus should be the public.

The minister complained of a lack of specialised personnel. The ADT had good architects that designed roads but it must encourage and sponsor people to specialise in transport.

There was a lack of qualified managers in network infrastructure development. There is nobody versed in budgets and project management. The concept of management was lacking.

The regulatory framework of the ADT must change. The authority had inherited many things from government, like different policies for white and red mini-buses, liberalisation of the coaches market, closed shop for taxis and hearses and other modes of transport.

These systems are not backed by anything in writing and lead to suspicion. The market economy in such cases worked in reverse because many were selling their licences at exorbitant prices.

There needs to be a revolution in the regulatory aspect doing away with three licensing halls full of bureaucracy. Everything should be IT-driven.

There are too many unwritten rules and everything is at the clerk's discretion, like the valuation of imported vehicles.

When it comes to road building, Dr Gatt said that the ADT did not have any backing services or databases on the cost per running kilometre for arterial and secondary roads.

Concluding, Dr Gatt said that the authority was sound but needed a re-organisation.

The rest of the debate will be carried tomorrow.

The MTA estimates were approved after a division.