There are times when I sincerely wish that the few people who ‘rule’ over us would take time out and appreciate that the island is not peopled with an illiterate mass, a great conglomerate of mindless individuals who are simply waiting for the words of ‘wisdom’ that so seldom seems to come from the voices of the lawmakers. These men and women are no better qualified to decide our destiny than a majority of the graduates who hold important places in local industry.
What bugs me this month is the dreadful state of even more roads that have suffered a decline since the rains came back once again. Forget the lake that now forms in Rue D’Argens opposite Muscat’s showrooms. Forget the multitude of new flood sites and concentrate on the pearly words telling us how a flyover will be constructed at the old ‘Gas tank’ roundabout.
That was first mooted back in 1998, for immediate attention, along with a safe entry/exit from and into Swieqi. We now have fresh promises for the new Xemxija bypass. This was declared to be of great importance some years ago and, of course, never got beyond preliminary sketches, which means nothing has been attempted.
Likewise, the glorious new road from Baħar-iċ-Ċagħaq to link up with the St Paul’s Bypass remains a painful dream within Transport Malta. Further along the planned new road taking traffic away from the beach at Mellieħa remains a distant promise.
Never forget the major highway linking Smart City to where exactly? The Abos in Australia believe in the dreamland; likewise our transport chappies seem to believe that once the motoring public has been told of the fantastic happenings to the road system, nothing more needs to be done.
Meanwhile, some parts of Route 1, yes the most important route on the island, remain slowly rotting away, and the junction of this highway with the Naxxar Road still sees bottlenecks from San Pawl tat-Tarġa in one direction and the junction with the Magħtab road for visitors northbound from Sliema.
Because there are ‘plans’, the dreadful bottleneck by Kennedy Grove has not been made a ‘left turn only’. This could have helped the flow last summer as the traffic lights at the end of Pioneer Road, St Paul’s Bay, have been made more ‘driver friendly’.
In most countries, the Transport Ministry publishes regular bulletins of what is actually being done. Here, we publish promises of what will be done in some future, distant, or about-to-happen world. None of us are any the wiser, nothing much seems to change from year to year, and yet ever more ‘innocents’ are passing driving tests and taking to our inadequate road system en masse.
On the same sort of topic, I wonder why we don’t have two traffic lanes coming into Burmurrad from Mosta. Some transport expert can then solve the problem of why traffic snarls up completely in the one-way section, only to clear long before Scott’s supermarket. Yes, I do have an opinion as to why this happens but let’s have the experts solve it for themselves.
More and more drivers of all ages and all types of vehicle are ignoring continuous lines when they deem it safe to overtake. Factually it’s never the lead vehicle that causes the snarl up, it’s vehicle number two for not overtaking when safe to do so.
Obviously, hundreds of locals think some clever sport is holding up dozens, if not the odd hundred vehicles, by moving at a speed too slow for the road in question. This is a punishable offence, if only we had a deterrent force, but if the lead vehicle is in some sort of trouble, it is the driver’s responsibility to pull over from time to time and let the traffic clear.
In all probability, Transport Malta is quite correct in saying that with more than 300,000 vehicles of one sort or another, we have too many. But in all honesty, has anyone calculated that with over 220,000 people holding driving permits, how many thousands are of an age or inclination never to actually drive a vehicle. We need a straw poll asking: do you hold a current driving permit? For what type of vehicle? Do you control it regularly, seldomly, or never?
Frankly, in my age group (over 75) I have a large number of acquaintances in the same age bracket or older who never drive at all, but have kept the licence ‘just in case’. Let’s get realistic and find out just how crowded our roads are, as a whole, and not the half dozen arterial highways that need to be avoided during peak traffic hours.