Your editorial on the dire situation on our roads (‘Traffic: Hour-long commutes’, TMID, 28 September) correctly states that traffic is eating into peoples’ lives but any recommended solution which is aimed at improving roads is too one-dimensional
Anything that is done to improve traffic flow will just attract more cars on to the road. A more holistic view is needed. First of all Malta is starting to experience the effects of “zoning”. Zoning is used to describe the concentration of facilities at a long distance away from where people live so that people increasingly need a car to get to schools, work places, shopping centres, supermarkets and other amenities. In other words, we are putting distance between where people live and go for shopping, entertainment and so on and becoming ever more reliant on cars and now we have the results described in your editorial. Such zoning has killed the urban environment by drawing people away; it has depersonalised street life and robbed it of its vibrancy.
Paceville, Malta’s prime entertainment area is a classic example. Paceville started its spiral descent into an entertainment area about the time that the term ‘zoning’ first started to be used – this dense concentration of entertainment facilities now results in mass motor migration at weekends adding to traffic congestion and pollution.
The implication here is that it is counter-intuitive to concentrate amenities into one place. School transport is a significant component in the causation of the traffic chaos; one could also argue that it is wrong to build schools far away from residential areas. The aim should be to have primary and, as far as possible, secondary schools as near as possible to where people live.
As to transport itself, as usual, we can only think is terms of (motor) cars/buses and nothing else! Again, our view is too one-dimensional. For instance, 20% of Malta’s population lives around the harbour area. A comprehensive harbour ferry service to all points around the harbour would relieve a lot of traffic congestion.
Such a ferry service network has been proposed but this continues to fall on deaf ears. In an ideal situation as, say, in Denmark, 40% of children cycle to school and 36% of adults cycle to work. It is commonplace to see mothers taking children to school by bicycle in European countries. A large number of school children, students and commuters use tram, train or bus. Many also cycle to a railway station or bus stop and catch a bus, train or even a ferry. This takes off a huge traffic load. The respective figures in Malta for non-vehicle transport are virtually zero – so we have correspondingly more traffic. And our public transport has not been improved by unsuitably wide and cumbersome surplus buses.
We are getting more health conscious in Malta and there are many who would consider cycling to work but, things being as they are, motorists want to hog the road to such an extent that they frighten bicycles off the road. Just concentrating on easing traffic and nothing else is of little use as it only entices more people to use their car. If more bicycles were used for medium to short commuting, then there would be correspondingly less traffic. Under present circumstances in Malta, neither children nor adults cycle because they are so endangered by the hazardous conditions on our roads from antagonistic driver attitudes – this must be reversed.
Commuting to school, university or work is as much a question of health as safety. This is especially so with our children, youths and university students. As things stand now, very few families own a bicycle and parents do not buy bicycles for children or forbid them outright to cycle. Maltese children start badly by missing out on cycling – a wholesome physical activity – and a major source of preoccupation of our university students is availability of parking space on the campus. Children develop an unhealthy passive attitude to mobility by growing up conditioned to car dependency. This is a contributory factor to the prevalence of overweight and obesity among youths and adults in Malta – the highest prevalence in Europe. Twenty-five per cent of our children are pre-obese or obese and 8% are frankly obese. Only 26% of Maltese children are physically active, one of the lowest figures in EU surveys. Then we have the toxic Sunday drive – often causing even greater traffic jams. Again, family outings on bicycles, as seen so often in other countries, are unheard of; typically families go out for the obesity-inducing Sunday ‘drive’ and heavy lunch in the family car. An added factor is that lack of road experience from cycling at a young age might also contribute to lack of road awareness for novice drivers resulting in a tendency to drive irresponsibly when these are allowed loose on the road after getting a driving licence.
The bottom line is that we must look at the matter holistically and do everything to decrease motor dependency by various means, failing to do this will result in an inexorable increase in the traffic and our girths. So we must aim to build schools (and supermarkets, health centres etc) near to where people live so as to be easily reached without a car and get children used to healthy mobility, such as cycling, by making our roads safer. Motorists must realise that they are making matters worse by rendering cycling a dangerous mobility option. If a good proportion of children, youths and students could ride to school or university it would mean correspondingly less motor traffic. Cycling should also be encouraged for medium to short commutes to work. But will things change? – probably not. We’ll never grow up – we are addicted to fossil fuel and the comfort of our cars; our love affair with the gasoline-driven car is incurable and this will probably last so till the planet runs out of oil.