Yesterday’s brief early morning downpour resulted in massive traffic chaos, flooding, damage and yet more loss of productivity.
It is unbelievable to think that a modern EU country has roads as bad as ours. Former Roads Minister Austin Gatt once tried to ‘justify’ the state of our roads by saying that there are worse ones in Poland and Athens.
Well, to anyone that has been to Poland and Athens, that is a load of codswallop. We will also remind Dr Gatt of the occasion he said it: It was when the new regulations were announced in connection with roadworks; to coin a phrase off Dr Gatt, to replace zips with carpets…
And yes, unfortunately, that is just how bad our ramshackle island’s roads are. It is pretty inconceivable to have a minister responsible for roads tell us that Malta’s roads were not so bad and that roads in Athens and Poland are worse. It also speaks volumes when the media questions are fielded with a sarcastic laugh and “at least we will have carpets of tarmac rather than zips now”, in relation to the shoddy work carried out by contractors when they rip up a street.
It is truly mind-boggling to think that on such a small island, we cannot manage traffic better. It beggars belief that over all these years, we have not managed to have smooth roads in all localities.
Some of the main thoroughfares yesterday were exposed for what they are; badly designed, hopelessly maintained, badly drained tracks that one would not even find in deepest rural North Africa (trust us, we know).
The government has made it a habit of blaming Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici era building practices (on clay, without foundations, etc). This is a given, a sound infrastructure was not the highest thing on the perit’s agenda (sic), but the fact that the government, in 2011, is still giving us the same excuses is pitiful and quite pathetic. Can the authorities not hear their own statement “It’s not our fault because Mintoff built it badly”. That’s over 20 years ago!
There has been some progress made in terms of durability of new roads which have been laid down in the last five years or so. There has also been an improvement in terms of passing services through accessible culverts by the side of the road; lo and behold, there is no need to rip up the street to fix something (that’s really, really clever!).
But still ,the camber is all wrong – and we will explain. It seems that even our traffic ‘experts’ do not know how to design roads. We go by experience. In every other country in the world, roads have a camber. That means, the road dips as it approaches the end of the width by the pavements. This is the clever bit, when it rains, the brilliant design accepted the world over apart from Malta allows water to drain away from the centre of the road and fall into drains. In that way, the road does not become a lake, cars do not stop, people get to work on time and productivity (and sanity) stays within acceptable limits. One wonders where they come up with such revolutionary and sensible ideas!
Dr Gatt was an absolute failure as roads minister (not to detract from success in other areas) – one only needed to look outside yesterday morning to confirm that. Now we have Tonio Fenech. Let’s hope he can do better, though our rubbish, dangerous and embarrassing roads have become so engrained in our psyche that we have come to accept them. What a country.