As another project involving flyovers is unveiled, as roundabouts are being shrunk and trees cut to accommodate more traffic lanes, one asks where do the government’s priorities lie?
Why is the government facilitating car usage when the problem lies with the car itself? Why is the government hoping for what Paul Mees calls auto-topia?
Auto-topia refers to the government policy of satisfying a city’s transport needs by private transport, specifically the car. Although it must not be ignored that the car offers reliability, comfort, convenience, security and a shorter travel time, these advantages can be offset if the car is stuck in traffic jams and if there are no free parking bays to be found close by.
In transport literature, there is a general consensus that auto-topia does not relieve congestion because cars are not the most efficient means to transport people in a city. Public transportation is. A bus load full of people can occupy much less space than 40 cars.
Even if everyone car shared, the bus would still remain the vehicle which needs the least amount of space. It should therefore only be logical that public transportation projects are favoured over projects catering for cars. Mees further proves this point through his real-world case studies.
The local failure of public transport should not discourage attempts at improving the public transportation services. The aim should be to look at success stories, such as in Switzerland, and learn from them.
People are not fools. They will not use public transport unless it offers an advantage that private modes do not. The two most important factors on which people decide how to travel are travel time and travel time reliability; especially when commuting to work at the height of the rush hour.
Thus, politically risky policies which financially punish car users will never be as effective to relieve congestion as those policies that punish car users temporarily. Mees suggests that the temporal penalty may be achieved by reluctance to increase road supply, by not constructing flyovers and widening roads.
On the other hand more effort is to be invested into reducing public transportation travel time and increasing travel time reliability, both of which are sorely lacking in Malta. The aim therefore is to create a high-quality public transport system. One in which public transportation lines are as direct and few as possible with as much frequency as possible with as little transfers as possible.
Furthermore, it must be recognised that people rarely travel because they like travelling, but rather to satisfy a need. Thus transport and land use are intimately linked together. A public transportation policy therefore must not be made divorced of a land-use policy.
Land-use policies that should give an advantage to public transport are pedestrianisation, centralisation of services and the reduction of parking bays among others.
Finally, transport without a car must not mean solely travel by bus. The recent integration of the Tal-Linja card to incorporate the ferry is surely a step in the right direction. So too are plans to consider the building of a rail system.
As Switzerland demonstrates, the solution is therefore integration of the bus, the ferry, the rail, the bicycle and the foot into one seamless system with coordinated timetables and a single ticketing system.