The announcement last week that the government is proposing to spend some €13.5 million spread over three schemes, which will mean that there will be roadworks on some 448 residential streets around Malta, is very welcome.
As our sister Sunday paper reported, no sooner than the announcement was made that a veritable tsunami of comments erupted in the country as more and more citizens clamoured to insist their road must be included among those that will be done.
These three schemes, the earlier scheme under Transport Malta’s aegis, and the clamour by so many people show how bad, really bad, the situation is. Those of us who live in good serviceable roads, without potholes, patchy tarmac, bumpy rides etc. must count themselves lucky. They are also in a minority.
It may be useless now to cry over spilt milk and moan about the past, but there seems to have been a point some years ago when a decision was somehow taken that since the roads were built wrongly, doing anything to them would have been a waste of money.
To be more specific: most of the roads in Malta have been built with next to no foundations at all. The services have been passed right through their middle, which means that in case of any repairs, the whole street must be opened up, and then the repairs are carried out using low grade and cheap gravel which explains the potholes and also that the same potholes always seem to resist the passage of years and time and again resurface every winter.
It was only earlier this year, when the Pope was coming, that someone took the sensible decision to stop waiting until such a time when the entire road could be done from scratch and to put a covering of good tarmac on the whole network of roads the Pope was to pass through. A lot of sarcasm later, we are still enjoying those roads even though we know this was only a partial cure.
Obviously, at this point, we can only wait until what the government has announced is put in action and then judge the results. We say this because for too many times in the past, roadworks have been promised which then did not materialise.
If the promise is kept it would only be addressing a part, possibly a small part, of the problem since it is clear, not just from the tsunami of comments but also from what we can all see around us, that the list of roads which must be done is far more than anyone can imagine. The €13.5 million that the government will be spending this year looks like becoming a fixed feature in every year’s budget.
People expect to have decent roads. After paying their annual car and road tax they feel it is not right the roads are so bad that they actually damage their cars. After all, people also carry out the VRT tests for their cars but no one seems to think about VRT-ing the roads as well.
As stated at the beginning, we are talking here about residential roads. To discuss the state of arterial roads is beyond the scope of this leader but as much as upgrading residential roads is urgent, so too is the programme for the upgrading of the arterial road system. We note that the government has unhappily allowed a hiatus between the upgrading of the Marsascala Bypass and the road to Zurrieq and the next arterial road upgrades coming along. But as has been remarked, it is the crucial nodes that need tackling – the queues between the cemetery and Marsa, the problems at Msida, at Attard, etc. It was OK to do the roads up north, but what really needed doing are the roads we use every day, where the real problems lie.
Along with all this comes, one must add, the reform in public transport which has as its aim to increase patronage over the coming years and so to decrease the numbers of cars on the road. The fact that at long last the government is listening to the real concerns and complaints by real people is very encouraging.