Road users must be dreading the opening of the new scholastic year as thousands of students, pupils and their parents take to the roads to arrive for lessons on time. Traffic congestion has become one of the most serious worries of most people as their frustration grows at the apparent lack of effective measures to tackle this problem.

Transport Malta, the Police Commissioner and education sector representatives are undoubtedly aware of the anger of drivers that is slowly but surely building up as they face the prospect of long hours of delays to get to and from work because of gridlock. They have now come up with a fairly simple strategy to deal with this ever-increasing problem: more traffic police are to be deployed once schools reopen.

Surely, the first question that needs to be asked is whether the police are the right people to address this crisis, which will last for at least nine months – the length of the scholastic year. The police have enough on their hands to fight crime and enforce the law where this is obviously being broken. More cynical observers will remark that the presence of the police in busy intersections of our arterial roads is often perceived to be cause of more bottlenecks.

What irks most motorists is the fact that, on practically every arterial road, including the Birkirkara bypass, the Regional Road and the Mrieħel bypass, road works seem to take forever to be completed even if the practice of working at night seems to be taking off in some projects.

Gridlocks cannot be solved by sanctimonious appeals by a government minister for motorists to respect one another as well as the highway code to ensure they do not obstruct traffic flows when parking their car. Of course, there will always be selfish drivers who abuse by breaking regulations and cause obstructions but the solution to this problem is proper enforcement and effective action to ensure a steady flow of traffic rather than a voluntary code of self-discipline by drivers.

Underinvestment in the country’s transport infrastructure needs to be addressed by a robust strategy to improve roads, build new ones and incentivising people to use public transport where necessary. Some traffic calming tactics are easier to implement than others.

For instance, some of the roundabouts are far too large and need to be reduced in size to enable traffic to flow more freely. Similarly, some busy junctions badly need traffic lights that are well timed to optimise the flow of traffic. Public transport has improved but is still nowhere near the efficiency level we need to entice people to use it more. Would it be such an expensive idea if school children were allowed to travel free of charge on public transport on school days?

Long-term projects will, of course, take longer to implement. What is worrying is that we are still not in the stage where we can have details of a strategic plan indicating where new roads will be built, or where overhead and underground transport is being considered. Apart from the much talked about channel tunnel to connect Malta with Gozo, we do not know much what policymakers are planning to ease the traffic congestion in our islands. Transport Malta remains in a slumber.

One shudders to think how much this problem will get worse when areas with a high density of buildings, like Sliema and St Julian’s, are further burdened by yet more buildings and residents.