One hopes the least possible number of the iconic Rabat road Mediterranean pines, planted in colonial times, will be uprooted to construct the much-awaited Attard bypass.

Central Attard needs this bypass because the village core itself has become a bypass. Ideally, what Attard’s village core residents need is a ban on traffic except for residents, as happens in Mdina. But we cannot have that because ‘traffic needs to move’.

Attard village is a bottleneck in central Malta.

It is strange we have a sudden uproar about trees when hundreds of ficuses have been uprooted in Paola Square and Żabbar Road all the way to Fgura (planted by Paola primary schoolchildren in Arbor Day in the early 1950s – now that is civic education) and in central Żebbuġ without a whimper from tree-huggers. Were it not for then mayor Angelo Xuereb, Naxxar’s ficus trees would have gone too because residents claimed the trees were destroying their houses.

The vast majority of Maltese are certainly no tree lovers.

A major fault lies with successive administrations since Independence because very few trees have been planted these last 50 years. Everywhere around Malta is crying out for trees.

We need trees not just at Kennedy Grove or Ta’ Qali Park but on roads wherever possible.

In Attard alone, for instance, we have two huge traffic islands, one in front of Mount Carmel Hospital and the other close to the financial services centre, where several trees could have been planted (in the ground not in pots). The Mġarr road was reconstructed with one wide pavement but no trees. It’s no use moaning about cars.

Many work activities cannot be carried out efficiently without private transport. And as long as thousands of us are not prepared to hand in their driving licence, we need improved roads.