Stephen Calleja's opinion article regarding traffic congestion rightly identifies the obvious elephant in the room, straight off the bat. Too many cars for the existing road network, but then attempts to blame the public transport system which is itself in the same traffic quagmire that bogs down you or me. It is also why, love them or hate them, we need bus lanes unfortunately. Take them away and what advantage does a bus have? Apart from ensuring that others take to even more cars, which simply compounds the problem.

We can all wish for flyovers, more to avoid having to give up using our own car, and metros and monorail... much the same, which we all think are for others to use. The reason for the road chaos of this week was simply everyone reaching for their car keys, leaving at the same time and trying to use the same routes. The message should have been leave your car at home, if you can, or use some other alternative or even car share. But we all did what we always do, and we all got stuck. It was a taster of the gridlock to come.

Flyovers are great at doing one thing, moving the problem someplace else, and if the system downstream can't cope.... and it won't, it just dumps more cars someplace else. And we are running out of someplace else, real fast. We need to find alternatives to car use and a lot quicker than waiting for someone to build a monorail or a metro system. The road system simply cannot take a further 17 cars, the daily average for the first quarter of this year, (or 24 of last year's average) or even just five extra cars a day. We cannot build enough roads or car parks in time. It is unsustainable and we are seeing the effects of a broken system that both political parties have equally failed to address over the decades. If there is any lack of planning, it is something we all have to share. You cannot afford to politicize the coming car-crunch, the solutions to which are unlikely to be pleasant no matter your political hue.

While individual costs may seem high, and here Dr Attard's study quoted an average for all trips (so yes the time spent for many will be higher), what is far more important are the costs to society that are calculated in millions, particularly health costs. Bicycle activists often discuss whether it is better to warn of impending congested doom or let gridlock take its natural course. I once discussed this with Dr Attard who pointed out that even if it took car commuters two or three hours to reach their destination, they would justify it as part of the cost of owning a car. The answer in many countries has been road pricing. But with the lack of political will for parking meters this is unlikely here, and Maltese drivers spend so much on their motor vehicle circulation tax that they are dis-incentivised to leave their car at home. Significantly reducing car tax and perhaps replacing this with tax on petrol might encourage drivers to leave their car at home, because they would save money. But there are realistically very few quick fixes except a shift to two wheels (in both forms) on the horizon.

Gridlock may be just a few months away. I only hope we wake up before we get there.

Jim Wightman

PRO, Bicycling Advocacy Groups Malta