The government yesterday said that it would be looking into finding a new style of management for road maintenance, construction, resurfacing and the ever present issues of lack of parking spaces and traffic gridlock.

Let us state this from the start. While the government did pledge that it would reduce the amount of traffic on our roads and improve flow. Has it ? Debatable. After the initial euphoria in seeing the bendy buses removed from our roads, one thing remained constant  - and that is sitting in kilometres-long tailbacks and the disastrous state of our roads.

This government cannot, at all, be blamed for the current state of affairs. It is a build up that has taken place over years. But we are now all close to breaking point. We are reaching saturation point.

This issue needs to be split into two. Let us start with road works. There is no doubt that things do seem to be getting done faster as new practices have been employed, such as starting works simultaneously at two ends of a street and working through the night (not rocket science really, but anyway). This is especially true with capital projects. But the government desperately needs to find a solution to the Public Private Partnership Project embarked on by the last government which saw local councils mired in debt to pay for road works. The state of many secondary roads is appalling and many are in dire need to be rebuilt, let alone resurfaced.

The main traffic artery, which is Regional Road, cannot continue to take the hammering that it is taking, despite attempts to resurface parts of it during off peak hours. It is also high time that some structural integrity tests are made on flyovers and suspensions, especially in view of the recent scandal of sub standard concrete being used in other capital projects.

And now on to traffic. This newspaper has always maintained that for traffic in Malta to be reduced, we need to first of all end our bizarre love affair with roundabouts, and construct flyovers or underpasses to allow the smooth flow of traffic on arterial roads. We also need a fully integrated holistic public transport system that does not only involve buses. There are various avenues which could be explored such as monorails, undergrounds, more use of water taxis or trams. The writing is on the wall. The Finance Minister has confirmed that traffic costs our economy money. Medical experts have also said that emissions from traffic are harming our lungs. Bucking the trend in the EU, Malta is one of the few countries where emissions from vehicles are actually increasing rather than decreasing.

Perhaps it is time for the government to look into some sort of specific purpose funding from the EU, because if we are not careful, Malta in particular, is going to come to total gridlock and will be enveloped in toxic fumes.