Christopher Gatt’s blog ‘Finding an alternative route’ (August 1) was spot on.

Last October, when the schools started in earnest, the then transport minister, Joe Mizzi said motorists should use alternative routes. What he should have said was that motorists should have used alternative ‘modes’.

What happened was that those alternative roads were the quiet little back roads that many people on bicycles have been using. As a result, people on bicycles sought refuge on at times virtually empty main roads.

The bottom line is there are no alternative routes to solving our car congestion problem without a healthy uptake of alternative modes. It’s no good proposing alternatives like metros, monorails and trams if everyone is still using their car, even if only to reach the metro station.

We are embarking on a spree of junction tweaking that makes it easier to use a car. This tweaking is a disincentive to pedestrians attempting to reach buses across busier junctions just as it is slicing through traditional links between ‘quietways’ for those on a bicycle.

We are just sending a message that it is easier to use a car by making space for them between towns, without first creating the space within those same localities.

That space for drivers can only come from others using alternative modes not alternative routes. Unfortunately, people won’t change easily and we are hardly encouraging them. It needs a stick and carrot policy and, much like those orange bollards Transport Malta loves so much, we already have far too many carrots. Alarmingly over the last few years we are seeing alternative modes like cycling getting the albeit unintended stick. The most recent layouts would appear to be an outright canning.

We only hope the new transport minister will change the rhetoric. Its easily done. Alternative ‘modes’ are the key, not alternative routes.