A chum of mine, challenging his failure at maths O level, asked the master: “Okay, I got only 15 per cent. But that’s 15 per cent out of how many?”

My own grasp of the subject is not that bad, but sometimes I will admit to being confused and sometimes confounded by figures. Perhaps there are statisticians and maybe even economists out there who can enlighten me.

We are, for example, given projected numbers for the vehicular use of the Gozo Tunnel, should it ever transpire.

How does one work out a figure like that? Do the experts assume that all the cars and lorries will suddenly desert the ferry and opt to go underground, if and when it is built - or would it be only some of them, in which case how do they know which will, and which won’t? The tunnel needs a minimum and reliably regular number of paying drivers in order to be viable - or even, sensibly, to be considered at all.

But... wait a minute... what will be that amount that needs to be met, and to make a decent profit on the original investment and the cost of constant maintenance, when we don’t know what will be found beneath the bed of the Channel - beyond the African continental plate that is constantly moving? How does one calculate the toll charge, when the only thing we can reliably forecast is that, whatever the projected budget, the final figure will be twice the amount? (It always is).

The tunnel proponents either haven’t asked regular drivers about likely usage - because if a majority favoured a tunnel, we would have heard about that by now - or they have asked them and got an unsatisfactory answer.

Have they even taken into account that - the way things are currently organised - crossing to Gozo on the ferry is free of charge? 

So, given only that simple single consideration, who - the appointment at Mater Dei completed, the day’s lectures at University attended, the Ryanair flight to Luqa endured, the deliveries of Gozitan goods made - is going to opt to pay to come home through a tunnel?

A free ferry, or a tunnel toll? Figure out the most favourable and most likely answer for yourself.

But if the ferries lose their vehicle trade they’ll go bankrupt.

The first effect will be a reduction in the number of crossings. Do “the people”, who (despite what the most recent opinion poll tells us) are currently calling for faster and more frequent ferries, want that to happen? I suspect not.

So where do the figures for tunnelling and eventual usage come from? Because, to me, they don’t add up.

The second odd number that bewilders me is the decision that the tunnel (if built) will be one lane in each direction with an emergency lane down the middle, all lanes divided by a low wall.

This is apparently a plan set, so to speak, in stone.

Anybody who has motored abroad - even if only to Sicily, or the nearest parts of mainland Italy, will know that tunnels there all have at least two lanes each way, and sometimes three. They will also be aware how frequently one or more of those lanes will be closed for maintenance or repair. And these are all tunnels built on land, and underground, not under water.

So where do the figures for tunnelling and eventual usage come from? Because, to me, they don’t add up

What does the driver, whether in a queue to enter the tunnel on the south side, or at the wrong side of Nadur on the northern approach, do, in the event of single-lane closure, when single-lane is the only lane? 

Most days, near to the top of the online version of this newspaper, we read of a motorist (or motorcyclist) who has hit a wall, or another vehicle. We read that drivers have “lost control of the vehicle”. We even find cars overturning, and sometimes mysteriously catching fire. So we might assume that, from time to time, there will be an incident in the tunnel.

What if the ferry crossings have meanwhile been depleted or (this is said to be part of the plan) new ferries have been introduced that favour pedestrian, over vehicular traffic?

Has anybody figured out that one? Because two into one doesn’t go, where tunnel traffic lanes are concerned.

And thirdly, we read that more than 80 per cent of Gozitans and a similar number of Maltese (south islanders) favour a tunnel. This is supposedly intended to be the end of any argument. 

We are told this is a figure compiled by Malta’s leading expert on opinion polls. Yeah? Well, I am something of an expert, too. And the difference between your expert and me is that I have actually commissioned polls (which he may not have done), and I know, and he must know, how they are worked and how they can be conducted to achieve the desired answer.

I am mostly aware that any answer to a poll is meaningless, unless we know the question.

Ask people whether a tunnel would be useful on the (very) rare occasions when the weather is so violent that the ferry doesn’t run, and you’ll get a resounding Yes, in favour.

Ask whether a straight fast uninterrupted road run from Malta to Gozo is preferable to queuing for hours for a ferry, and the answer would be roughly the same.

Ask whether people “would use it” and you’ll find that most people would go, at least once, just to look at it - another Yes response.

But ask whether they think it “would be good for Gozo” (which you don’t ask, because it is not a “statistical” question) and the answer would be a resounding - about 90 per cent - No.

On the other hand…

Ask whether people want faster and more frequent ferries and the answer, from people who actually use them, would of course be Yes, 100 per cent.

Ask whether alternative, more accessible, ports on the south side would be a brilliant (if by no way an original) idea and the response would obviously also be Yes.

Ask whether, given faster and more frequent ferries, and better accessibility to ports (at least on the Maltese side) there would be any need for a tunnel...

But, supplied only with the figure that 80-odd per cent of “the people” want one, our politicians of both complexions are terrified of offending such a number even though a vox pop among people in the street (and contributors to this newspaper) would produce an almost opposite result. They can’t vote against the project if both parties want to do it.

In which case, as my schoolboy chum might well have been entitled to ask: “But… that’s 80 per cent of how many?”

Revel Barker is a semi-retired English newspaperman and long-time resident of Gozo. 

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece