The debate on school operating times and restriction of heavy vehicles at peak times to alleviate traffic congestion has drawn some fire from interested parties. The persistence in not providing parking facilities in the belief it increases private car use has not resulted in any desired effect.
I think responsibility for past and present political decisions and the role they played in contributing to the current situation has to be highlighted.
Transport officials had declared that school opening times contributed only about one per cent to traffic increases. That estimate must have factored in only the personal vehicles of commuting teaching staff and the minibus fleet. The contribution of private cars being used to ferry children must have been ignored.
In the past, we walked to local village or town public schools or Church-run schools that happen to be close by. Secondary schools were more decentralised but did have some degree of regionality. At that age, many were responsible enough and street savvy to commute using public transport.
So what changed? Government primary schools are still present almost in every village and most government secondary school and post-secondary school institutions are close to main bus routes.
Primary level pupils attending a private school were asked what mode of transport they use to get to school: 58% said they were ferried by parents, 42% by private minivans and none used public transport. This is a random representation of what can be expected in every class in private and Church schools.
What caused this proliferation and popularity of Church and private schools which provide an education to over 30% of the school age population? The education policy changes imposed in the seventies and the Church school/government confrontation in the 1980s caused an irreversible decline in confidence in State-run schools. Mindful parents who valued their offspring’s education scrambled to send their children to Church schools and then to independent schools which proliferated out of need.
To many parents it was a significant financial burden but their child’s education came first resulting in social segregation because a class of school children left government schools. By the time the Church/State ‘agreement’ was finalised, confidence in state school education never went back to what it used to be.
The congestion on our roads during the school months at peak hours is caused by at least 30% of the school population having to cover a significant distance to their school while two-thirds of those are ferried by their parents with a trip to and from school twice a day.
When we talk of traffic congestion during school months we can squarely put the blame on the shoulders of those who made changes in the education system purely based on an anti-classiest policies which paradoxically created just that – social and class segregation. Talk about the butterfly effect.
The poor state of Maltese roads was (and in quite a few places still is) legendary. The importance in road building was not the quality of the work but the ribbon cutting by dignitaries and the video footage for the evening news.
The poor state of Maltese roads was [and in quite a few places still is] legendary. The importance in road building was not the quality of the work but the ribbon cutting by dignitaries
After 80 years of Maltese motoring, the first roads started to be rebuilt to a decent standard. What set off this industrious upgrade of the road system? I would guess that it was the mucho dinero which flowed in from third parties, first through the Italian Financial Protocol and then from EU cohesion funds.
After 80 years of mediocre roadswe started to have decent roads built – and others were paying for it! To avoid losing the funds, we rushed to complete road projects involving major traffic routes and hubs. A surge in traffic congestions caused by diversions could hardly not be expected.
The favourable terms on offer: EU- financed roads cost €4,000 per metre run while other roads financed from our taxes cost only €500 per metre run. We couldn’t afford to move slower or we risked missing the EU money train. If increase in traffic congestion was the result, so be it. We therefore can blame past administrators who did not make sure that roads were built to a decent standard and maintained at regular intervals.
For four years significant attempts were made to provide an effective and reliable public transport system. This has already cost the local government (our taxes) over €120 million to date.
These attempts should have started back in 1995 when traffic congestionwas quite rare and would have prevented many from making the choice of purchasing a car and having a car-centredlife style.
The rise in passenger car ownership is blamed on the fallacy that the Maltese are car mad. Rather, it is the lack of the required bus services which drove the Maltese mad when their only option was to get their own four wheels.
Car mad persons go around in hot rods and cars of some substance and price. More than two thirds of the car fleet however consists of small- to medium-sized, lower-priced ‘normal’ and old vehicles which hardly reflects a car madness to a degree as witnessed in football, village feasts or political party activism.
Once every man and his dog owns a car, and paying heftily for the privilege, the government expects motorists to keep paying, garage their cars and use buses – which for medium distances is more expensive than the fuel used if one used his own vehicle.
School transport is another shambles.
In order to have the capacity to transport all schoolchildren to their far-flung schools without starting the mad minivan dashes to and from these schools at six in the morning, the minivan fleet needs to be expanded fourfold.
Most would then have no other utility except to wait for the end of school. The costs would be prohibitive and in no way comparable to the expense of taking the child to school in one’s own car.
This issue combined with the school choices made as explained above are an important contributor to traffic congestion.
The authorities and media keep emphasising the number of licensed vehicles on the road, over 330,000 in the last count. What matters is the number of driving licence holders not the number of vehicles licensed. Many older or retired licence holders do not contribute to peak traffic. Recent revelations disclosed that over 70,000 visas were issues to Libyan nationals and over 14,000 residency permits were issued by Identity Malta last year alone.
Are there no statistics of the thousands of vehicles these expats (or immigrants) could have brought over to Malta? The booming tourist industry also leads to increased tourists’ vehicles or hire cars.
As Maltese living in our own country, do we have to use public transport, diminish using our cars while paying the same rates, whether we use them or not, while increasing road space to non-Malta-registered vehicles which do not pay taxes and are not nicked by the authorities when they over speed or park illegally?
Albert Bezzina is an ophthalmologist with an interest in traffic-related subjects.