The start of the scholastic year has brought with it the same traffic problems that are always experienced in Malta at peak hours, particularly in the mornings, when thousands of people are on their way to work and thousands of parents are taking their children to school.

No matter what improvements have been made in our traffic network, there are still several areas that are still notorious for traffic jams, where it takes 15 minutes to travel a few hundred metres. It happens in areas where traffic is managed through the use of traffic lights, and in others where there aren’t such luxuries.

Malta’s problem is that there are too many cars on the road and, with space being as limited as it is, there is only so much that governments could do to create a flowing network.

For one thing, many parents opt to take their children to school in the family car because the school transport system is not efficient as it should be. For example, children are often picked up a full 90 minutes before school doors open. This means an early wake-up call and also a good chance that the students are left to roam free in the streets surrounding the school, once they are dropped off a long time before the lessons start.

This, of course, would also mean that it takes children more than one hour to arrive back home at the end of the scholastic day. While this arrangement might be accepted for the older students, it is certainly not suitable for the primary school children, and therefore many parents have no option but to take the children to school themselves.

The other side of the coin is that many adults choose to drive to work because the public transport system still leaves so much to be desired in spite of the many reforms that we were supposed to have had over the years. People still prefer to endure the frustration of long traffic jams and the difficulty to find a parking space, rather than catch a bus.

All this, of course, means that every morning all our main roads are jam-packed with cars. The problem is less accentuated in the afternoons because schools finish earlier than a working day, and therefore the traffic is more dispersed.

An improvement in public transport is one priority that should be taken in hand to improve such a situation. Over the years, there have been various attempts for the system to become more efficient and reliable, but the number of people who make use of buses continues to diminish, year after year.

One way of reducing – in part – the morning traffic jams is by not allowing heavy vehicles to be on the road during the rush hours, say between 7am and 8.30am. Of course, this excludes buses and coaches taking children to school. But if we were to eliminate trucks, trailers and other heavy machinery that are on the road during the peak hours – not to mention the karozzini, which also slow down traffic considerably – we would have tackled part of the problem.

Yet, there is more that could be done. One idea is to have a system of car-pooling. The government tried to promote it some time ago but it has not caught on at all. People should be encouraged to share their cars with others going to the same destination, and this would definitely reduce the number of vehicles on the road. It is quite safe to say that a large percentage of cars on the road in the morning have just the driver in them.

This could work both for parents taking children to school and for people going to work. If there are fewer cars on the road, traffic would be much smoother and people will waste less time. Added to this, one’s fuel expenses would also be reduced, while we would all be breathing better air.