Gridlock costs. The many traffic jams we encounter on a daily basis do not just produce road rage and a suicidal urge to make up for lost time by rushing around as soon as the jam clears but also losses.

Who knows how many man hours (and female hours) are lost through people arriving late for work or for appointments?

As the bulk of Malta's labour force goes out on the annual summer shutdown, so too, it would seem, the cars on the roads somehow multiplied as people headed to Gozo or to the beach meeting the people going about on their daily routine, especially the delivery vans and trucks.

And even before we mention the many roadworks we meet, there are some specific areas where traffic jams happen day in, day out, at almost all hours except the very early or the very late.

So, blame not the roadworks even if these have contributed to the delays and the gridlock. All roadworks are necessary, and maybe should have been done earlier. They have to have their time and any cutting of corners will inevitably produce the need for more roadworks later on down the line, in some years' time.

This small country, with its car-crazed inhabitants, its dense population and everybody's penchant to drive instead of walk is mainly the author of its own gridlock.

Maybe the roads have not been done right, and maybe the crucial nodes have not been ironed out but no amount of planning can ever bring about a more ordered country unless we all, the residents of this country, somehow contribute to the solution of the problem.

It has been said, over the years, that an efficient and functioning public transport system would remove the need to drive everywhere. We have had two, not one, attempts at a new public transport and they have been fraught with problems and difficulties that the end result is nothing like what was planned. And people still use the car.

There are certain areas where the difficulties are greater. Valletta is a case in point. It has become impossible to park anywhere in Valletta but still people flock to the capital for business and for personal errands and have to park a very long way out and walk the rest, unless they are driven, lucky them.

The commercial capital, Sliema, is grid-locked for the better part of the day and car parks are few and far between.

So too the main commercial areas and the roads linking them.

One problem of course is that when these areas were developing, people did not think about the infrastructure such as putting in parking.

Then some bright spark thought the way to solve the problem was to create a roundabout, and another after that, and another ... So the roads have become a series of queues leading from one roundabout to the next.

We as a nation are light years behind other people not just Europeans but also in the Third World when it comes to roads. Road signs are inexistent, quickly rubbed off, and road surfaces except on the latest and newest roads, are bedeviled by the frequent roadworks which create troughs and mounds where the roadworks took place.

Over the past years, we have attracted some welcome EU funding for roads but they were spent on just one road, although the most important one, and the promised upgrade is far from ready.