A supposed traffic expert was speaking during a television programme this week and said that traffic problems are ones of perception.

The claim prompted outcry as people took to Facebook the next morning to show their 'perception' of sitting in traffic for more than an hour to get to work in the morning. Some people tweeted that they had set off at 6.30 am to get to work at 7.45am. This is not perception, it is very real. When Tom Hanks was in Malta to film Captain Phillips, he tweeted photos of himself playing the fool in shocking disbelief as he sat in the car with his driver in gridlocked traffic in the tunnel that passes under the runway.

Also, just a couple of weeks ago, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said that the amount of traffic jams in Malta was affecting the economy and causing businesses to lose money.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has also pitched in and said that whoever thinks traffic is a problem of perception is living in the 1960s. The fact of the matter is that traffic has become murderous. Some people have said that it's the government's fault. It isn't. Plain and simple. It is the result of the way Malta has developed over the years from rural villages with tiny winding streets and turned into a mini-metropolis that has always had a pretty darn poor public transport system. Often, we blame the operators... but again, it is down to the conditions they have to work with.

As our economy expanded and improved and people became more affluent, cars became status symbols. Everyone has one. This country has one of the highest car to person ratios in the world. There are some 700 cars per 1,000 people. We are a nation and a people that are totally addicted to and reliant on cars. We can't cycle because the cars and buses are too much of a menace. The public transport system is a shambles and we only make limited use of water taxis. Of course, the biggest problem is that we do not have an automated mass transport system. So what is the solution? We must improve the road network. This is something that has been a work in progress under different administrations through the years. The PN government's did it and now the PL with Joe Mizzi at the helm, has continued to never ending struggle. It is clear that we need a smoother traffic flow and we need to eliminate bottlenecks. But we cannot simply just dig it up all at once and get it done. It would result in even more chaos and even more gridlocks that we already have.

This is not an issue of perception. It is a daily problem that each and every person on these islands has to deal with. It is damaging our health, it is damaging our economy and above all, it is damaging our sanity.