Dear motorists of the Maltese Islands,

I do not drive. This statement is often received with looks of utter bewilderment from friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and business associates.

“But how do you…how do you get around?” they ask, voices quavering with confusion, wondering how on earth I manage to navigate an island the size of Birmingham without the assistance of a Toyota Vitz.

My reasons for not driving are numerous and are due in part to personality traits, such as a fiery temperament, minimal patience and a penchant for using indicators (those curious little things that light up and flash on the side of the car to let other road users know where you are turning), which make me completely unsuitable for driving in Malta. My second reason is that I cannot see any actual logical reason to do so. Realistically, you can walk from one end of the island to the other in six hours, everywhere you would ever really desire to go is situated in one big interconnected area, and there are fantastic, low-cost public transport solutions available between 5am and midnight, seven days a week.

Yes, you read that right. I am talking about the buses. Now I know that when I mention the Tal-Linja, the experiences and memories you associate with it are the ones of the old yellow buses – mishmashes of metal held together with Liverpool FC football scarves and Playboy centrefolds from the early 1990s; the drivers who welcomed you with a grunt as they puffed on their cigarettes and swigged their Cisk, as a canary or two dangled forlornly from the ceiling in a small cage. Who can forget their haphazard schedules and the way it used to rain inside the cabin on a particularly wet day? But, it is important that you know these days are long gone and that, since 2017, the buses come when they are supposed to, you cannot see the road through holes in the floor and they even have air-conditioning, lights and proper buzzers – as opposed to just a bell with a bit of string attached to it.

I live in the south of Malta and travel to work near San Ġwann five days a week, a journey which requires me to take two buses in each direction. On a good day, this can take me 40 minutes each way, on a slightly worse day, perhaps one hour. The day’s travel costs me the grand total of €1.50 and in the last six months, I can count the number of times a bus has been late on one hand. All in all, I find the bus services reliable, punctual and the drivers are, on the whole, courteous and polite. I quite enjoy sitting on the bus people watching, listening to the occasional singing bus driver (I was once serenaded with 80s power ballads all the way from Marsa Park and Ride to Zabbar), and being greeted with “L-ghodwa it-tajba lilek” by an enthusiastic and smiling Malta Public Transport employee.

Yes, I know that public transport does somewhat limit your freedom, and yes, I know that passing your driving test and getting a car is a rite of passage and a status symbol, but is it really necessary to drive it every day, at all times, no matter what the distance?

The point is that if you work in an office of 90 people and you all live in Mosta or Sliema or Balzan, why are you not car-pooling. Instead, you are each getting into your individual cars, driving in the same direction at the same time to the same office and then complaining about the terrible traffic to the very people you have been bumper-to-bumper with. On the days when it takes me over an hour to get to work, I sit in traffic and I look out of the window at the hundreds of cars all going the same way, each with one person in them. I cannot help but be reminded of lemmings following each other brainlessly into the abyss of the Msida valley at 8am on a wet Monday morning. On an island where there are almost more cars than people, why can people not see that they are contributing to an unsustainable situation? Apart from pollution, congestion and huge delays, one needs to consider the sheer number of accidents on our roads caused by dangerous, reckless, selfish and often illegal driving.

If you really need to drive then fine – put down your mobile phone, familiarise yourself with your indicators and mirrors, and offer your colleagues a lift, but otherwise, please, I implore you to at least try to use public transport from time to time. Malta is being engulfed in a plume of smoggy, grey, filth caused by hundreds of thousands of people using gas-guzzling vehicles to travel any distance over five metres and it simply cannot continue.

Let us look to European cities such as Amsterdam, London and Paris for inspiration. All of them are much bigger than Malta in terms of population and size, yet all have efficient public and alternative transport systems that are used by millions of commuters every day. Cycling, scooters, trains and walking are all reasonable alternatives for navigating a country of this size but are not yet being utilised.

Something must change; something has to give, and putting more and more cars on the road and ignoring the problem while complaining about the terrible traffic is not going to solve it. People need to change their attitudes to how they travel. They must realise that walking for 30 minutes to and from work is not a big deal, taking the bus for 40 minutes is more cost and time-effective than sitting in traffic for an hour, and considering cycling to work will not only improve your health but it won’t cost you a penny. The issue of Malta and its traffic congestion is not a situation that can be solved by a few; it needs a group effort to change the habits and perceptions that have been a way of life for decades.

 

A frustrated bus user