Despite Labour MEP Miriam Dalli’s ground-breaking crusade to reduce emissions being hailed as a landmark success for Malta, our own Budget did little to address the problems of traffic congestion and emissions.

While Malta can play the get-out-of-jail-free subsidiarity card with the European Commission, planting a sapling for each newborn or new car is not fooling anyone. Promises of wider roads just promise wider traffic jams. The smart money is on moving people not cars.

As such, free buses for young people, together with free school transport, was a positive step towards discouraging car use. Removing 3,185 cars from the road and spending €8.5 million (for free transport) is offset by an economic benefit, which according to Grant Thornton, amounts to €14.3 million.

We need to demonstrate the value of getting people out of cars.

Coincidentally, having people on bicycles every day must surely mean similar savings and, importantly, costing them nothing.

The savings could easily quadruple those made as a result of free school transport given the added benefits of health and fitness. So why is the government so adverse to tapping into this too?

Perhaps it is because there is always an awkward pregnant silence when the national cycling policy comes up at meetings. Shamefully inept dithering spanning years, empty repeated promises, even worked into the national transport master plan and just another failed target.

Stalled cycling development, a Metro parked for seven years and roads filling up faster than we can build them but a push towards bus use seem to indicate one thing. A trend as demonstrated in the Budget for future car drivers taking the bus. Maybe that’s why new roads are dual carriageways.