I am always slightly apprehensive about New Year celebrations. It is this weird feeling I get every year on December 31, when I get the Irwiegel syndrome – that OCD-ish feeling that every hour of New Year’s Eve will represent the months of the year ahead. Which of course piles up so much pressure, that every year I just want to sleep it out.
Because I am writing this on New Year’s Eve, I am a bit superstitious about the topic I am going to write about, and because I will write my first column for 2015 on traffic and buses, I am anxious that I’ll be spending a year drumming my fingers on a steering wheel.
But it cannot wait, because this is the time when we get the chance to list our wishes for the year, in the hope that they will come true.
So this is what I want to say:
Please, please can we not have our buses go green again? I was reading the paper last week, happily nibbling a fresh chocolate croissant baked by the Italian coffee shop adjacent to the newsroom, when I stumbled over the bus-colour-change report. On cue, I choked on a croissant flake. I don’t know what upset me more: the new bus colour or the fact that I nearly wasted the divine pastry.
In 2015 buses can not go green again. That will take me back to the buses of my childhood and will put me off using them forever and ever amen. Green buses throw me back to an dysfunctioning Triton fountain; Gaddafi; desolate roundabouts; appliances dumped in the countryside; Gaddafi; a land with no traffic lights, except for an unworking set in Msida; that Libyan centre in Tower Road, Sliema, which always had green flags flying; Gaddafi; no street dustbins; and shoddiness all over.
The bright spark who came up with the idea of going back to green must be either 18 years old with no sense of historical perspective or else a 50-something weirdo who is nostalgic for Malta’s Cuban period.
The bright spark who came up with the idea of going back to green must be either 18 years old with no sense of historical perspective or else a 50-something weirdo who is nostalgic for Malta’s Cuban period
Either way, he must be sacked.
Hopefully, we are still in time to reverse the decision. The Spanish company, Autobuses de Léon, will take over the bus service on Thursday. In these four days, they can sit down and choose from an infinite number of colours: from Aero blue to African purple, from French raspberry to dark vanilla.
They need to study the psychology of colour and realise that aesthetics have the power to pull or push potential customers. Bottom line: any shade will do really, apart from green. Which brings me to my next wish.
I hope that the bus system in 2015 will be so efficient that commuters will leave their cars parked in the garage and take the new, non-green-coloured transport. I hope that people will be almost reluctant to use their own cars, but when they do, they won’t get stuck in traffic, because anyway everyone will be on the bus, arriving on time.
This is crucial. A Eurobarometer survey shows that 70 per cent of Maltese respondents used their cars daily to travel around. Only 21 per cent used public transport.
Forty-two per cent of Maltese respondents said they do not use public transport due to lack of punctuality and inadequate routes. And despite having the shortest distances in the EU, the Maltese are among the highest users of personal cars, according to the latest EU survey. Given the size of our island, this is comical.
We have been waiting for an excellent bus service ever since Austin Gatt told us he will “revolutionise” it. La revolution failed and keeps on failing. Joe Mizzi has since taken over, but let’s face it he’s no Che Guevara either.
Meanwhile, I am tired of chewing my inner cheeks, I am tired of turning to my daughter sitting at the back and asking to pray for the traffic to clear up (children have a direct line to God). I am tired of arriving at my destination with my hair frazzled and walking like a wobbly cowboy from joint pain after having been sitting stiff at the wheel for two hours to get from Paola to Naxxar.
I am not on my own. According to the Eurobarometer survey, 82 per cent of Maltese respondents mentioned traffic congestion as their biggest daily headache compared to 60 per cent in the EU. I worry that bit by bit we’re slowly turning into a nation of nervous wrecks.
So this is my rosy view for 2015: a traffic-free Malta with brightly coloured buses zooming past and everyone so on time, so unflustered, that we won’t be known anymore as ‘the island where time stood still’ but as ‘the island where time means cheer’. Let’s raise our champagne flutes to that.
Happy New Year.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti