The government is considering the establishment of low-emission zones to reduce the number of polluting vehicles in areas where air quality is problematic, Transport Minister Austin Gatt said this afternoon.

He said that there were five areas - Floriana, Hamrun, Msida, Sliema and Fgura where air quality was considered as being problematic. The governemnt had therefore started talks with the local councils with a view to establishing what mechanisms to use to reduce polluting vehicles in their localities.

Several models could be adopted, Dr Gatt said, pointing out, for example, that London had adopted the congestion charge for such a purpose.

One problem, the minister said, was the large number of commercial vehicles and trucks on Maltese roads, at 80,000 and 50,000 respectively.

The minister was speaking when he announced the results of a transport usage survey commissioned by Transport Malta and held in May. He held his press conference at the Transport Malta offices in Sa Maison, a week after a bomb was placed there.

The survey showed that the private car remained by far the most popular means of transport, accounting for 75% of all trips.

The use of the buses dropped by 5% compared to another survey held 12 years ago, to reach 15%. It was 31% in a survey held in 1989.

It was even found that people were walking less, preferring to use their cars even to travel short distances within their localities.

The survey was held among 6,666 households - nearly 17,000 people.They together made 42,000 trips on May 26, the date of the survey.

It was found that the number of people opting to use public transport to go to Valletta had increased, as had the number of people using public transport within the capital itself. That was in stark contrast to all other locations, where it was the use of private cars which increased.

Dr Gatt said many of the findings of the survey were already being addressed in the bus service reform, and the biggest challenge ahead was to bring about a culture change for people to leave their cars at home and use the buses.

Other survey findings showed that:

The number of households without a car increased from 13.8 per cent to 15.6%, probably due to an increase in elderly people.

The number of households with three or more cars increased by 5% to nearly 20%.

It was also found that apart from the morning rush hour, afternoon traffic had increased considerably between 1-7 p.m.

In 1998, when the last survey was held, 20.4% of people who used the bus said they had a car available. That increased to 38% in the last survey.

Half of those who went to Valletta on a bus said they had a car available.

7% of respondents used the buses as their only means of transport.

Just 1.7% used the buses to go to work.

13.1% of car trips were made within the boundaries of each localities, especially in St Paul's Bay.

36% of drivers and 48% of passengers were willing to use the buses if the bus service improved.