A study carried out by the University of Malta and released earlier this year showed that drivers spend 52 hours in gridlock traffic every year.
Fifty-two hours mean one hour per week, and so I find it hard to accept the results of such a survey. Ask any driver who uses Maltese roads and he or she will tell you that the length of time wasted is much more than that. Unless, of course, it is just a perception as someone would have us believe.
Drivers must have consumed a good chunk of these “52 hours” this week, especially if they were trying to drive from Mellieha or St Paul’s Bay down towards the central part of the island or going in the opposite direction. Distorting the news and giving the impression that everything worked smoothly can only help to eat away at one's credibility.
It is a shame that the situation has been allowed to degenerate in this way.
The closing of the Coast Road for the past days is not the reason for such chaos on our roads. It only helped to exacerbate the problem.
The thing is, we have too many cars on our roads, and our roads are not designed to take in so many cars. The too many junctions and intersections, not to mention the roundabouts, add to the time-wasting. Bad decisions such as the bus lane at the Sliema-Gzira front only help to make matters worse. Poor road management skills by those planning deviations also aggravate the issue.
We have so many cars because our lifestyle is good. There is a private car for every adult member of our society. But the real reason for this state of affairs is not the money we make and how we spend it – it is the poor public transport system we have had since time immemorial.
If the bus service was good, fewer people would use their private cars, and it would be much cheaper for them to do so. But starting off from the old bus service, going on to Arriva and coming up to what we have today, our bus service continues to be inefficient, unreliable and a total shambles. I am not exaggerating when I say that, looking back, probably the yellow buses, in spite of all their defects, were the best system we had.
A bad public transport service – and matters continue to go from bad to worse no matter the effort put into it – leaves drivers with no other option but to use their own vehicles. I am sure that many people would leave their cars at home if the public transport service is good. But they cannot take risks of arriving late at the office, if at all, given that it has often happened that buses do not turn up.
The Labour Party, when in Opposition, led us to believe it had a magic wand ready to be used to create a perfect public transport service and create a faultless road management system. The one who used to make the most fuss when Labour was in Opposition was Joe Mizzi.
Joe Mizzi now has the reins in his hands in this sector. But he has failed to deliver and, what’s more, he has disappeared these past few days instead of at least attempt to explain what is going on.
Joseph Muscat promised us a transparent government. What he meant was openness, accountability and good governance, although I have serious doubts whether any of this has been achieved. But now I am starting to believe that when he said transparent he meant invisible.
Unless, of course, all the frustration motorists are experiencing is just a perception.