In the editorial ‘Toxic air pollution’ (September 20) this newspaper aptly referred to our heavy air pollution from traffic as “the silent killer”. The editorial explicitly indicted public policymakers for failing to protect citizens’ health from the damaging effects of transport pollution. This editorial garnered no website comments, which goes to show that people in Malta are so attached to the comfort zone of their car that they prefer to look the other way when faced with an inconvenient truth.
Ironically, the very same issue carried an opinion piece by our Transport Minister under the ominous heading ‘The roads ahead’. This piece was indeed about more roads in the form of Malta’s fearsome project to create more roads, build flyovers, widen roads and convert open spaces into parking space. An appalling side effect is the wholesale destruction of trees to make space for traffic.
This “upgrading of our transport sector”, the minister tells us, recognises that “the infrastructural requirements of Malta’s social and economic developments are constantly changing”. But is the prescribed remedy the correct one? Is adding tarmac and destroying urban trees to create more space for car traffic the way to go, while failing to invest in the social, economic, and health benefits of improving public transport and healthy mobility options?
Received wisdom from over half a century tells us that adding road space aimed at ‘easing traffic congestion’ will be immediately matched by a proportionate increase in private car use because more people are encouraged to opt for driving their car.
Traffic congestion therefore remains at the same level – or increases – as may pollution. If cars continue to be added to our road network at the present rate of around two dozen per day, then annual premature deaths from exposure to pollution will increase as the cumulative effects add up over the years.
The adverse effects on health from vehicle exhaust pollution are now proven beyond doubt. A recent Royal College of Physicians report re-emphasised that traffic pollutants are especially harmful to infants and children.
Those of us who are middle-aged, or older, had the privilege of growing up in the relatively unpolluted surroundings but extrapolation of current data from other countries suggests that about 400 people in Malta can be expected to die prematurely every year from exposure to traffic pollution.
This massively expensive road project was a pre-election gimmick of colossal folly designed to catch votes
The future mortality can be expected to be even higher in today’s children and adolescents who are exposed to traffic pollution environment; they will be burdened for life by the accumulated accretion of toxic pollutants in their lungs. Our young are also growing up deprived of exercise because our hostile road environment deprives them of the opportunity for everyday exercise; it also precludes cycling, which should be a normal healthy childhood activity.
It is hard to avoid thinking that this massively expensive road project was a pre-election gimmick of colossal folly designed to catch votes and appease Malta’s oil and motor trade. No doubt it will also help to swell government coffers from taxes but this is unlikely to be enough to cover future expenditure on ill-health and the social costs of premature death.
Of course, children, who are most affected by today’s traffic pollution and degraded living environment, don’t vote. But car drivers do vote – and that’s all that seems to count.
There were some chinks of light in what the minister had to say. It has been announced that Malta will follow in the footsteps of other EU countries in phasing out new petrol and diesel vehicles in the “next few decades”. A “few decades” is a long time and an awful lot of people are going to die prematurely from the effects of our pollution unless something is done to stem our escalation of road traffic right now. And our children will continue to be exposed to pollution.
We are told that “studies and planning for the development of a rapid mass transport system” are well under way. This new buzzword fails to impress. Transport in a small island like Malta with short travel distances needs to be neither ‘rapid’ nor ‘mass’. It just needs to be well-planned, pleasant, reliable and convenient. The potential of a comprehensive harbour ferry service continues to be ignored.
Public transport has been in urgent need of updating for decades but there is still little or no allocation for public transport. There is no visible evidence of “studies and planning for the development of a rapid mass transport system are well under way”.
Is this an excuse for delay so millions can continue to be invested in improving our roads to please the car lobby?
Other countries are taking traffic pollution seriously. The UK and France propose to ban all new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040; Norway and India have a more ambitious target of imposing the ban within less than a decade – 2025. Unlike Malta, other countries are beefing up public transport and encouraging alternative mobility.
Our Transport Authority needs to rid itself of the delusion that travelling in a car makes people important. There are other human beings who use our roads: there are pedestrians, bus commuters waiting hopelessly at a bus-stop in rain or blazing sun, children, the aged and bicycle commuters. These people are just as important and their needs must also be included in the equation. The millions being spent solely on improving our roads to facilitate motor traffic fail to recognise this. This is shameful; it creates more dilemmas and adds problems, not solutions.
George Debono is a retired doctor with a research background and a special interest in health and environment matters.