Word of mouth works miracles. By 10am yesterday the new parking on the Floriana Xaghra, which was done in record time, and soft-opened on Monday with nothing to pay, was all full.

So too were the three car parks in the vicinity. So was MCP. So too, to amazement, was the upper Park & Ride site as people flocked to Valletta for Christmas shopping, to get a free ride on the new Barrakka lift, to watch the entertainment in the roofless opera house, or for any other reason.

Valletta can’t get enough parking spaces, it seems when the volume of people pours into the capital as it always does at Christmastime and at significant other times.

One cannot understand, however, why the football ground that was being used alongside the new parking area was blocked. It could have taken even more cars that had to spend hours going round in circles trying to find some alternative place to park.

This is, nevertheless, how we seem to do things in Malta. We do changes by fits and starts and then do not carry them to their ultimate fruition and consequently leave many of them either unfinished or without the proper maintenance.

Such is the case, for instance, with the new roads this government and the ones before it have been doing all over Malta, especially in the North.

It would seem, for instance, that each stretch of road that is done while it is really done according to the latest technology (or fad) differs from the one that was done before it.

For instance, if one looks at the roads that have been done in the past months, one sees lighting of a different type from the roads done before. The more recent ones are much more lit, have lighting at more shorter distances while the roads done before now offer a dismal view of low lighting.

For instance, today’s lights are white with a covering that does not allow light to spread in all directions while the previous ones were yellow and did not have this covering.

So too, more important things such as road widths, cambers, the frequency of roundabouts, etc. One road has one set of rules, while the next one has a different set. There are places, such as at Qawra and Pembroke where a two-lane road suddenly becomes a one-lane one, and nobody is informed.

At the bottom of the Telgha t’Alla w Ommu in Naxxar, the unlit and very dirty sign indicating a central strip appears suddenly out of the gloom spooking unwary drivers.

Roads that were done in recent years lack maintenance and the signals painted on them disappear with rain and wear and tear. So all the effort (and expence) that went into the new roads is nullified in a very short space of time.

The worst thing then is roads that have just been made up being dug up soon after the completion of works. One has not seen this happening in recent years but it used to happen very often in the recent past. Hopefully, better coordination between the ministries, departments, agencies and what have you, eliminates such cock-ups.

With the failure of Arriva to break down the dominance of private cars in Malta, having proper roads, properly maintained has become even more important in today’s Malta.