September’s ‘Car Free Day’ was viewed by several commentators as a dismal failure, but was it?

One of the problems with the day is that it’s a concept we as a nation have not yet grasped, as has the rest of Europe.

Firstly there isn’t a choice of day. Car Free Day has always been on September 22, ever since the first International Car Free Day in Barcelona 20 years ago. Malta has traditionally marked it on a Sunday.

The idea of car free day is to be slightly inconvenient, but only in a way that makes people opt to use the bus, walk or cycle, or simply do anything but be car dependent for just one day a year.

The idea is to show that if fewer people use cars, public transport could be reliable, wading through the traffic to get you to work on time, simple because there is less traffic.

One of the constant complaints about traffic congestion is that we do not have an efficient alternative, i.e. a public bus service. The truth is, we do.

It is not better or worse than any other European public transport service, and certainly better than the pre-Arriva service. The problem is that it is made inefficient by the presence of other traffic.

One of the successes of this year’s Car Free Day was thegovernment sticking to its guns and holding it on the right day. What its critics fail to realise is that had it worked, had weall embraced it, traffic would have been reduced, buses would have moved and we may have had a freely moving first school day experience. It was an opportunity lost. Asking people to voluntarily give up their cars does not work en masse.