Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Ian Borg believes that Malta’s high ranking in the Eurostat report, which analyzed the number of passenger cars per inhabitant in each EU country, confirms the challenges that the Ministry has ahead of it.
This newspaper contacted the newly-appointed Minister in light of a Eurostat report titled ‘Passenger Cars in the EU’, which was published recently and showed Malta as having the second highest number of cars per inhabitant in the European Union. Malta was shown to have 634 passenger cars per 1000 people, after Luxembourg, who ranked first in the study, with 661 cars per 1000 people.
Asked by The Malta Independent for his comment on this report, a spokesperson for the Minister said “this basically confirms the challenges we have got – that is managing in a better way our traffic flows, offering more punitive incentives for the public to shift to public transport and possibly also by utilizing other means of private transport.”
In an article published by this newspaper yesterday, traffic expert and consultant Bjorn Bonello suggested ways in which Malta’s car issues can be eased. He mentioned educating motorists as to how much it costs to use a car, providing more managed parking and creating holistic parking strategies for local councils, implementing schemes like Controlled Vehicular Access and helping local councils produce holistic and integrated traffic management schemes, amongst others.
In the run up to the last general election on 3 June, the Labour Party had pledged that, if re-elected, a new Labour Government would provide free, supervised transport for school children to help ease roads from congestion. They also pledged that students, children, pensioners and people with a disability will use public transport free of charge and free Wi-Fi on buses in order to encourage citizens to use public transport. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had also said that a new PL government would construct a railway system.
They had also pledged that the car scrappage scheme will not be removed, and pledged that if anyone is to give up their driving license, they will be given the right to free public transport. The Party also pledged to encourage people to use small motorcycles rather than cars, with the scrappage scheme being extended so that every person who chooses to scrap his or her car will get €2,500 voucher for a 125cc motorcycle.
The Party also proposed smart-parking technology all across the country. Through this application, drivers would know how many parking places are left in real-time. The government had also proposed more Public Private Partnerships for more public parking spaces. They had said that if a private piece of land is converted into a parking, the person would be charged only 15% tax for the first seven years.