Traffic was never a breeze in these parts but these past weeks, when one expected a let-up now that the school-goers are sitting for exams, it has actually become worse.

Arriving in Valletta is an obstacle course of roadworks and closed passages, that begins from the start of your journey, culminating in the ultimate challenge of parking somewhere on the peninsula of your final destination and making the last leg on foot.

A one to one-and-a-half hour journey to cover some 10 kilometres. You could have flown to southern France in that time! It is as though Transport Malta is preparing the general population to take the new buses out of necessity as other alternatives are being blocked.

I tried making the trip by bicycle for example, and I arrived within the vicinity of the gates of the walled city that is Valletta more quickly than by car. But Transport Malta wasn’t about to let me by that easily. A Transport Malta official stopped me at the road leading to the Waterfront, declaring it was no entry. When asked how he would suggest I get to Valletta by bike, he declared that I should approach the capital from the main road – Triq Diċembru 13. Although by then, I was getting exasperated to the point of being suicidal, riding a bicycle up that particular stretch of road seemed too unattractive a way to depart this earth.

So my proposal to TM is this: Take the full step and issue a decree that everybody must use the new buses (except of course MPs, who each have a personal reserved parking space in the heart of the capital right on pedestrian streets as seen only in the best of banana republics). And leave us these last days of freedom to use individual transport.