Unfortunately, the Times of Malta cropped my letter ‘The easy part’ (April 29).

The omission pointed to the fact that our current road building frenzy concentrates on a potential improve-congest cycle rather than the given wisdom of avoid (car use), creating a modal shift and then improve (roads).

Expecting a voluntary change from an improve-congest cycle is both naïve and self-defeating. Equally we need to critically ask what any infrastructure is trying to achieve.

Cycling infrastructure, for instance, can do one of two things. Firstly, it can get cyclists out of the way of cars, such as the Coast Road’s TEN-T network cycle lanes or, alternatively, it can serve to make cycling easy and achievable, like the old Żebbuġ cycle lane.

The recent news of the new tarmacked cycle lane on Triq Taċ-Ċawsli has the cycle commuting community a-buzz, hoping it is more scenario two than one, but is it?

With no published specifications, unknown design speed (ideally 18-32kph) or indication how cyclists will move intuitively on to or off it, it is difficult not to write it off as any other walking speed disconnected shared footpath falling foul of the Stevenage effect.

Stevenage was a new town designed with cycling infra built from the ground up on the grand Dutch scale but cycling failed to flourish, why? Well, Stevenage was also built with nice wide roads and relatively little congestion, so people took the path of least resistance. They drove everywhere, even tiny distances. Sounds familiar?

It is the same for bus use and walkability. But running the available numbers (not that there’s many) for Triq Taċ-Ċawsli, the newest bidirectional tarmacked cycle path, built right next to a ‘faster’ road for cars, it’s unlikely to prompt modal shift.

I hope I’m wrong and it signals a new political bravery towards avoid-shift-improve. Time will tell.