Many times we seem to take it for granted that unfortunately, what one administration does, the next one will undo and then redo again.

But now we find ourselves in the situation where we do not need a change in government for this to happen. All it takes is a change of minister. What one minister does, the next one, or the one after, will undo and redo.

A case in point is the Coast Road.

A few days ago, the Mepa board approved a Transport Malta application to convert the entire stretch of road from Salini to the Commonwealth Cemetery at Pembroke into a dual carriageway with a centre strip in the middle.

But this same stretch of road has already been ‘done’ – and not so long ago, by Minister Censu Galea.

Maybe, it was not done properly at the time. Maybe the upgrading that is going to be done now is more thorough, more fundamental. In particular, it would seem that splitting the road into two lanes, separated by a centre strip, will hopefully do away with the many head-on collisions that the road has been notorious for and eliminate the many deaths that occur every so often.

Maybe the road’s many bends and alignments needed changing.

We cannot understand, however, why all the electricity poles and lighting on this road need to be changed too, although once we are doing something, we need to do it well.

One can also understand that we need to move along the Ten-T axis, if we want to get EU funds since this is the only road that EU funds can pay for.

But even so, why not tackle one of the stretches of the Ten-T road, from San Lawrenz to the Freeport instead of tackling one that has already been ‘done’?

There are many difficult and tricky segments along this road that have not yet been touched and which badly need improvements. The longer we keep postponing difficult decisions, the harder it will be. There was all that controversy, for instance, about the stretch between Mellieħa and Xemxija with plans for a tunnel underneath Mistra Heights, which seem to have been shelved. And other plans, similarly shelved, for crossing Mellieħa Bay inland rather than on the seaside.

One can understand that the next instalments of this road upgrading will regard the difficult nodes of the Kappara roundabout and that of Marsa.

But now more has been revealed and this is worrying.

Veteran and respected car and road journalist Hugh Arnett, writing on the Sunday Times, with his vast experience of how things were decided over the past years in the Transport Malta top levels, revealed that:

The suggestion that traffic should be forbidden from turning right into, or coming out of Kennedy Drive towards Qawra has long been lying on TM’s desks but the board turned this suggestion down. More deaths have occurred as a result. Now the road is going to become downhill only and cars will not be allowed to turn in, causing all that traffic jam that one can see almost every day.

Then there was the issue regarding the road from Naxxar spilling over to the Coast Road and creating those huge queues. Even by 1999, it had become obvious, Mr Arnett wrote, that action had to be taken and the Traffic Control Board approved the use of temporary traffic lights to be activated over the weekends. But then the Roads Department Board came in and refused the traffic lights, saying it would build a roundabout – which never came to be. Now this junction will be ironed out as part of the new dual carriageway alignment.

The third problem area is where the road from Madliena spills over to the Coast Road but even this will be addressed as it will no longer be possible for cars coming uphill to cross to go to Madliena.

But the most crucial of Mr Arnett’s revelations regard the Kappara roundabout. He says the traffic lights that were installed there by Transport Research Laboratory, the advisers to the British government, were removed by Transport Malta at a later stage. The result, as anyone who goes round that at rush hour can experience, is pure mayhem.

In other words, we, the taxpayers, keep paying for the confusion and possibly interference in what should be professional decisions taken by the experts. As a result, work which is done is possibly not done well at all, and has to be redone at a later stage. As a result, too, people get killed, and accidents occur. And the profiles of the people who take on the responsibility and onus to do things are besmirched by those who come later and redo things.

What takes other countries years to do, takes us more. And what it costs them to do, costs us more. The more we consider how small and how lacking in resources we are, the more all this sounds barmy and ridiculous.