It has become customary and the situation deteriorates day after day and week after week: there are far too many cars on the road and this is now verging on a country-wide gridlock especially on weekends when people, families, friends go out.
But instead of a relaxing trip to Gozo or to the beach, it has now become an almost impossible task.
It is true there are an inordinate number of road works going on, especially the Coast Road and the alternative route through Manikata, which further complicates matters.
It is also true that, again, especially on weekends there is a limited police presence on the roads and that this is encouraging all kinds of abuse and consequent road hogging. One can see all sorts of abuse that reward the abusers – lane switching, queue jumping, even going against one-way systems.
Apart from honking and thus risking further intemperance and physical reactions, there is not much the victims can do.
The basic problem, however, remains the sheer number of cars on the road. There are far too many cars on the road, and they continue to increase every day. All the efforts to cut down on this number, such as scrapping old cars, introducing incentives to scrap them, enforcing VRT, etc have not been very effective.
Nor have the efforts to raise the benchmarks of cars brought into Malta, such as Euro 5 standards, emission grade, etc and VRT itself, had any appreciable impact.
The range of options the country faces is limited. One cannot impose any restriction on importation without causing a national reaction.
Improving the roads, enforcing standards, creating better roads and eliminating the various obstacles that hinder traffic is thus a priority.
Among these possible improvements, surely we need to focus on the huge impediment to the smooth flowing of traffic that is constituted by roundabouts. One can sense one is nearing a roundabout by the long queue patiently waiting its turn. It should be clear that the roundabouts concept has not worked, rather roundabouts have made everything far worse.
On a more general level, the country must understand it needs to set roads as a priority. To do so, far more funds are needed. It is a pity that the much-needed EU funds have been used in creating beautiful if hardly used roads in the North while the main problem points have remained untouched. It is also a pity that the Coast Road had to be dug up for the third time and that it is taking so long.
The country must understand it needs to spend far more money on the roads but this must be done wisely. Certainly the sums spent on patching roads which revert to their bad situation with the first rains could be used better. Certainly there are many residential roads still awaiting their completion.
But to tackle the main problems requires hard thinking and harder decisions. For instance, substituting flyovers for roundabouts can cost money but will perhaps expedite travel time.
It has long been a received wisdom that the solution to the huge and dense traffic is to reform public transport. Two reforms down, nothing has changed and the situation gets daily worse. On the contrary, the bus lane between Sliema and Gzira has reduced traffic to a walk as is daily seen to be the case.
The traffic situation is far too large to be tackled piece-meal, perhaps not even by one government and one legislature. But every day that passes is making the situation daily worse.