It is October, schools and rain are back in full swing, and once again we are all inconvenienced by major, frustrating traffic jams. Rush hour stretches through half the morning, and then through half the afternoon. The buses are also stuck in the traffic.
The government is making plans to improve the roads but this will not tackle the core of the problem. If the number of cars keeps increasing at the current rate, we will end up in gridlock anyway.
Malta is fully dependent on private cars as the main form of transport, and this has long been the case. But instead of building more roads we need new, alternative ways of getting around. The ‘green transport plans’ required for major development projects are meaningless. I would be interested to know whether any of them have been effective.
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What are our options to get around? Many pavements are so bad that it is difficult to walk comfortably, let alone use prams, wheelchairs or scooters. People are afraid to use bicycles, fearing that they might be knocked down. To be fair, it is not easy for cars to allow space for cyclists and motorbikes weaving through traffic on the narrow, chaotic roads.
More walking and cycling would also help tackle other national problems like obesity. Not to mention the health implications of air pollution from exhaust fumes. Transport and health authorities need to put their heads together. And the Planning Authority must withhold its carte blanche for construction, which pushes the transport crisis.
Instead of building more roads we need new, alternative ways of getting around
People will not easily leave their cars behind unless they have good alternatives. But apart from the carrot, there is also the stick. Other countries try to impose disincentives, such as congestion charges when using busy streets. What is our disincentive, apart from getting stuck in a traffic jam?
We are supposed to be shifting to electric cars, yet the Planning Authority is now allowing a series of new petrol stations to be developed in the countryside. Old, polluting cars and trucks could be penalised, to get them off the streets and encourage people to drive smaller, cleaner vehicles.
As we witness each October, school transport makes a huge difference to traffic congestion. If only children could attend schools which are closer to their homes. The trend of building new government schools outside urban areas must stop. Apart from increasing road traffic, they also eat up valuable and limited open, green areas.
‘Situations without hope’
I would guess that the religious sentiments of Maltese voters across the major political parties do not differ greatly. The mix of people who care or don’t care about religion, agree or disagree, is probably roughly the same.
Linking religion in Malta to political identity today is retrograde and divisive. Regrettably, both main political parties occasionally still do it. PL media pundits have been pointedly critical of the Curia and clergy in recent years, even fanning dead flames of old divisions from decades ago. And now the new PN leader has invoked Catholicism as some kind of badge in his campaign speeches.
Faced with an audience made up of the country’s leaders on Independence Day this September, Archbishop Charles Scicluna spoke about the common good, quoting at some length from the encyclical Pacem in Terris of the 1960s (coincidentally, a time of frayed tempers between religion and politics in Malta).
The sole reason why civil authorities exist, the religious leader reminded the secular leaders on the church pews in front of him, is to work for the common good. Moreover, those in positions of State authority “must exercise it in a way which is morally irreproachable”.
Scicluna then warned against “creating an oligarchy of the super-rich while reducing our workers to situations where they cannot even afford the monthly rent for a decent home, where the savage laws of demand and supply are reducing many people to situations without hope and without a secure future”.
Whether you are religious or not, this is a valid comment. The soaring prices of property and rents are a real and growing problem for many people.
The Archbishop has often expressed his concerns about unsustainable development. This is reflected in a new position paper by the Church Environment Commission, describing Malta as “one huge building site”. The commission urges the planning authority to “become more proactive in planning rather than occupying its time processing development applications”. Sound thoughts, if only some of our destructive and blinkered planners would listen.
As our politicians evidently think that religion is important enough for them to wave about when they play to the crowds and to the media, and for when they celebrate Independence Day and other solemn occasions, then perhaps they could also pay some attention to what the Church is actually saying.
Today the Curia seems more in tune with many people’s sentiments about the environment than some of our members of Parliament, who are intent on enabling construction, building mega-roads and unrealistically expanding the population of this tiny, crowded, bizarre island.
We live in a tsunami of construction, roadworks and cars. Just stop for a moment and allow us to breathe.
petracdingli@gmail.com