Why am I so jealous when I read in a recent edition of the Guardian Weekly that the city of Seville, in Spain, which has a population of about 700,000, has become a model city in terms of sustainable transport?

Over there, the number of bicycles in recent years has increased from 6,000 to 70,000 due to a new network of 80 kilometres of segregated bicycle lanes.

The same article says that Seville is a “living proof that more or less any urban area can get lots of people on bikes by building enough connected, safe bicycle lanes” and that bicycle lanes separated from the main road by a raised kerb or fence makes cycling accessible to all ages.

I am jealous when I read this because I know that this could easily be emulated in Malta if there were the right urban planners, politicians and transport consultants with a vision or ability to think out of the box and realise that such a network would improve people’s health, reduce pollution and traffic congestion and give people a fun and healthy way of commuting, going to school, exercising or just going shopping.

As in Seville, the bicycle lanes could also be accessible to wheelchair users, facilitating their access to different parts of the island or even cargo bicycles that would deliver goods to shops.

Maybe one day, when our roads have become so congested that there is simply no point in getting into a car, change will happen in Malta, too, to emulate Seville’s success story.