If ever there was an apt situation to use the term perfect storm, it is for last Friday’s recipe for a Malta-made disaster: kids were back in school, students were refilling the University car park with their shiny cars, rush hour(s) was in full flow and, the pièce de résistance, it rained cats and dogs. Result: chaos.
Told you so. That’s what thousands of frustrated motorists were saying on every social media channel they could get their hands on as they sat in their idling cars. After a relatively quiet summer, everyone was waiting for the day when all sorts of educational establishments reopened their doors and traffic problems returned. What people had not counted on was a deluge on the same day.
No one had guessed either that, instead of doing their best to alleviate the situation as should have been their role in these circumstances, certain policemen seemed more interested in dishing out fines to stationary motorists who were trying to inform others that they were going to be at least an hour late for whatever meeting they had that day. This officiousness added insult to injury and did little to enhance the reputation of policemen who charge around on their motorcycles.
There is no longer any doubt in anyone’s mind that transport in Malta is a problem. Over 325,000 vehicles are licensed in a country that has a population of just 400,000. That is close to 60,000 more than a decade ago.
To make matters worse the road networks have been failing. Whether it’s the mismanaged timing of road works – happening in so many places at the same time – to the terrible state of an unacceptably high number of roads which have more potholes than tarmac, it is impossible not to get stuck somewhere. Add to that our roads’ inability to take rain and the problem becomes chronic.
What can we do about the situation? Reducing the number of cars on the road is an obvious first step. Doing something about school transport is another. These measures would also benefit our environment.
Improving the state of our roads should also be treated as a priority, coupled with the dire need to solve a parking crisis that has become so prevalent that many people have come to fear taking the car because they might not find a parking bay when they return home.
Public transport is a failure. From the Arriva debacle a few years ago, to the highly unsatisfactory ‘service’ in place today, commuters will only take a decision to catch a bus if it makes their life easier, as is the case in congested big cities abroad. They will not do so if the service is unsatisfactory or unsuitable for their particular schedules.
The terrible situation is not a perception, as the transport minister ill-advisedly said. It is a terrible reality that the government must treat as an emergency situation. It can waste time complaining that people are politicising the issue – a case of pots and kettles if ever there was one – but that will not take anyone forward in any sense of the word.
What is required is a staged plan. First, to alleviate the current problem as quickly as possible – and it is far too simplistic to say people should use their cars less; secondly, seriously looking for a long-term solution which in an overcrowded metropolis-like country has to take the form of rail transport – whether overhead or underground.
The longer it takes to realise the obvious, the more perfect storms there will be.