Three local councils – those of Pietà, Safi and Għarb – were allocated €90,000 between them to launch schemes encouraging people in their areas to abandon the use of their cars for certain activities.
They were the winners of the Permanent Sustainability Mobility Measures scheme that forms part of the EU’s European Mobility Week.
European Mobility Week is an opportunity to promote sustainable mobility to urban residents throughout the EU. It is devised to encourage a more healthy lifestyle, clean (non-air polluting) mobility and more sustainable urban transport. The awards are given to those chosen by an independent panel of transport experts to recognise and encourage local authorities to raise awareness of sustainable mobility.
Transport Minister Ian Borg has said that initiatives encouraging people to refrain from using their cars were beginning to pay off in Malta. A record 50 million bus trips would be operating this year compared to 33 million in 2012, not an insignificant increase. Moreover, an initiative, known as Bus 20, offering free public transport for 16- to 20-year-olds had attracted 3.2 million rides in the space of 10 months.
The Pietà council was awarded €50,000 to invest in a free and on-demand van to ferry people around the locality. The van would drop people off at bus stops to ease congestion in and around the town, which is famous for being a traffic hotspot and invariably heavily congested.
In an effort to encourage young people to use public transport, the Għarb local council will be making use of a €30,000-grant to give free electric bicycles to those aged between 16 and 18 years. Although some may question this decision, Dr Borg did have a point when he said there have to be initiatives to attract young people to keep using public transport even when they are eligible to apply for a driving licence. No doubt, the electric bicycles will be warmly welcomed.
The Safi council received €10,000 to implement what was quaintly called a “walking school bus”, described as a form of student ‘transport’ for children who walk to school along a set route, in much the same way as a school bus would drive them there. Students in the locality will leave from two given areas to their primary school accompanied by volunteer adults. The “walking school bus” is part of an initiative to encourage people to refrain from using their cars. It also has the added bonus of helping children remain fit and healthy.
Given the enormous challenges being faced by the country from an excessive use of private cars, these initiatives are limited, a mere drop in the ocean. However, their significance lies in demonstrating more widely what can be achieved in the face of the country’s endemic refusal to leave cars at home and use cleaner, alternative means of transport.
These limited initiatives hold wider lessons affecting the country’s health and economic well-being. Traffic congestion on the roads leads to thousands of man hours loss of productivity. Walking, cycling and exercise – not sedentary immobility in a slow-moving car stuck in polluting traffic – are healthy and could prevent hundreds of premature deaths each year.
These are the benefits of raising nationwide awareness of sustainable mobility as Pietà, Safi and Għarb, in their own limited way, have attempted to achieve. They deserve to be commended and emulated.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial