Scooters the way forward
In her opinion piece (March 17) Petra Bianchi asks “Are they (the population) willing to switch to smaller, more efficient vehicles?” It seems that to many, Ms Bianchi included, the natural way forward to ridding ourselves of the tens of thousands of...
In her opinion piece (March 17) Petra Bianchi asks “Are they (the population) willing to switch to smaller, more efficient vehicles?” It seems that to many, Ms Bianchi included, the natural way forward to ridding ourselves of the tens of thousands of old, polluting cars is to replace them with other (more efficient) cars.
This country has a passion for cars; indeed we probably have the highest number of cars per capita in the world. The average age of the Maltese car is 15 years, with the pollution this brings with it.
But Malta is a town by European standards. Distances are very short and it enjoys excellent weather almost all year round. We have problems with lack of space; indeed during peak hours cars spend more time stuck in traffic than actually moving. In some places it’s impossible to find parking spaces. Moreover we also have a culture of garages which take up parking spaces (in front of the garage) needlessly.
Most car trips are for personal transport. Have a look at the number of passengers in cars and there’s an 80 per cent chance that you see no passengers.
So in my view, the solution lies in what people of most other European cities and towns do – ride scooters. Scooters do not get stuck in traffic, are very efficient, and they have lower emissions than cars.
We should think out of the box and not try to replace a car by another car but make a leap towards encouraging the use of scooters on a national scale. I suggest that the €1,000 refund scheme in place on new cars if one scraps an old car be extended to new Euro3-certified scooters. We would achieve the same objective – getting rid of old cars – while encouraging a clean mode of transportation and also reducing our import bill.
If there were more scooters on the roads, there would be fewer cars and consequently it would become safer to drive scooters, which in turn would encourage the use of more scooters. In no time at all, we could chop off at least 40 per cent of our old cars from the roads and have them replaced by something that is more efficient and pollutes less than a new modern car, and takes up less space. Moreover, they exert less wear and tear on our roads.
I encourage the powers that be to give this proposal due consideration when formulating transportation policy.