On Friday, Malta ground to a halt. It had been raining the night before, and there was another torrential downpour, lasting perhaps an hour, that same morning. The usual places flooded, several vehicles broke down, more people than usual took to their cars.
I am not guiltless in this. Having left my car outside the previous night, I decided to use it instead of my motorbike – I thought that by leaving early I’d be able to avoid the usual traffic. Apparently, everyone thought the same thing.
Despite leaving home at around 7.20am, at 9am I was stuck in gridlock that was going nowhere fast – and I do mean nowhere. In around half-an-hour we had not moved the width of a single block, and what little movement we made was mostly due to a few drivers doing a U-turn and heading back the way they came, at which point the rest of the cars would close in the gap.
Eventually I gave up, found a parking spot and did like R.E.M’s Everybody Hurts, abandoning my car and walking the rest of the way to work (during which time the other cars probably didn’t move much more than 10 metres).
Flights were missed, emergency vehicles were held up, buses were just as stuck as any other vehicle, many students arrived late at school, businesses and services were thrown into turmoil, the list goes on. Clearly we need to take some concrete steps to address this issue and we have to do it fast because the problem just keeps growing.
I am no expert in things traffic-related, but I will take the opportunity to make a few suggestions and observations. Maybe someone with the ability to do something about it will be able to glean something useful from them.
To begin with, since personal transport in Malta is so dear to our hearts, how about encouraging the use of two-wheelers? Motorbikes and scooters provide the advantage of personal transport, while causing less congestion as well as being less affected by it. Make it possible to get a small-engine scooter licence one or two years before one can get a car licence.
Mark more parking spaces exclusively for motorbikes or scooters – especially at University, Mcast, and so on. If young people start off on a scooter they’ll be more likely to stay with it later. Reduce or eliminate the road licence for them and subsidise the registration tax. If even a third of people switch from a car (one driver, no passengers) to a scooter, traffic congestion would be reduced drastically.
We also need more traffic police. In a country with such a high car density we need more people to manage things. This includes responding quickly to reports of accidents where the drivers may be holding up traffic while waiting for the warden or police officer to draw up their report.
We need to find out why so many parents do not make use of mini-vans and coaches
A major contributor to traffic are schools – and for the most part it’s not the school vans that cause traffic, but parents who use their private cars to take their children to school. School authorities, parents, school bus drivers and the Education Ministry should get together and find out why so many parents don’t make use of mini-vans and coaches.
Two factors are the fact that many mini-vans call for their students far too early, and the price tag. One thing that could make a difference is for schools in the same area to share school buses. That way, one school bus could collect students from a smaller area and transport them to two or three schools that are near one another, instead of having to cover a wider area to collect students to go to one school.
As the Rainwater Flood Relief Project nears completion, one hopes to see its benefits soon, but we must also plan for water in all roads and whenever new construction takes place. In many places, traffic jams were caused by a single, very deep puddle which cars had to pass through very slowly and carefully. These may have to be individually identified and measures taken to allow each one to drain more quickly. At the same time, if some of that water gets diverted into the ground to replenish the water table, it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
In general, we need to work faster on road projects. It’s understandable that traffic will increase in other roads when a busy road is closed for repairs – but at least we can plan such works so that they are carried out in the shortest time possible, if necessary engaging separate teams so that work does not stop, 24 hours a day, and ensuring that once one part of the work is completed, the next is started right away.
These are only a handful of ideas that could be implemented fairly quickly, which I believe could help alleviate our traffic problems, and I’m sure there are many others. Malta needs a comprehensive plan – because no single idea will untangle this situation – and we cannot procrastinate any longer.