I never heard such a load of rubbish as the lot I heard during the impromptu debate on traffic in our Parliament last week.

I ended asking myself why the Nationalist Party requested a debate when it had nothing concrete to propose, and why the government accepted with such alacrity to hold the debate that very same day when it had nothing serious to say.

The leaders were as bad as the other participants in the debate. I cannot understand why Simon Busuttil keeps insisting on his proposal made last year for children of private and religious schools to take the bus as the children of State schools do.

For starters, this proposal once again confirms the perception that the PN is on the side of private and religious schools above all else. This is not the 1980s and the situation is different.

Secondly, it will not work. The parents of children in those schools will still persist in driving their children themselves even if they are offered free transport.

Thirdly, far more was expected of the Leader of the Opposition who may become prime minister in two years’ time. Is that how he intends to solve the problem?

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, was equally vapid and in a way even more dangerous. For while he kept offering possible fundamental solutions to the traffic problem, he left everything open-ended. And, worse, in my opinion, he showed he was following the advice he no doubt gets from the Transport Malta experts who, in part at least, are responsible for the mess we’re in.

To take just one example: the prime minister’s government was the one to create the bus lane in Sliema-Gzira which has made an already chaotic situation that much worse. The previous government had put in some bus lanes, notably in December 13 Road, but that did not create the mess the Sliema one does.

Has anyone calculated how commuters from Sliema have had their travelling time improved by the bus lane? A government worth its salt would revisit the past decisions and analyse the consequences before moving on to such projects as underpasses, roads through tunnels and the like.

It seems to me that the people in the House have no idea of the hell we are living in when we want to get from Point A to Point B, which is understandable when you consider many of them are chauffeured around.

The first thing I want to say is that the fault for the present situation lies with no one else but ourselves, the private drivers. We buy cars, we use those cars on our own, with no thought of sharing, we clog the main arteries, with predictable results. Then, if rain threatens, the number of cars on the roads multiplies and the gridlock gets worse. So the first thing politicians should say, but won’t, is that we are to blame for the gridlock. Of course they will not say this, because politics in Malta is built around promising more and more things and praising the electorate even where it should not be praised.

Secondly, what the leaders should have said, but again did not, is that tackling the situation on the roads requires money, big money which has to come only, or mainly, from our taxes. There will not be a solution to the problem until the Minister for Transport, whoever he is, forces the Minister of Finance to devote more funds for roads, especially now that the EU funds we have depended on over the past years to create the beautiful roads up North are running out; the amount of road works that need to be done to see some improvement in traffic conditions is enormous.

But as neither the Prime Minister promised an immediate doubling of the funds for road works, that means he is not serious. And as Dr Busuttil never went anywhere there, it shows that his heart is not in it except to get anti-Muscat mileage.

Minister Mizzi and his government should not have continued the PN project to rebuild the Coast Road. This paper’s sister publication, the daily, told him so months ago. Maybe the answer to this is that funds had already been committed by the EU and would have been lost.

When ready, the revamped Coast Road will be a fast lane to … an even worse gridlock between St Andrew’s and St Julian’s.

On Thursday I tested the system my own way: I left Mellieha, where I live, at 7am and arrived in Valletta after a hassle-full journey at 8.45am. Along the way there was an incredible gridlock at the end of the St Paul’s Bay Bypass (Erba’ Mwiezeb); another one where cars from Bugibba emerge to join cars from Mellieha on to the new stretch of the Salini road, then more delays on the road leading to t’Alla w Ommu and then on to the Maghtab deviation. Then, whoopee, it was zipping up the new road at Bahar ic-Caghaq, only to slow down to a crawl even before the ex-Forum Hotel as cars from High Ridge and surrounding areas added to the numbers. Then, incredibly, the queue of cars leading to the Kappara roundabout started right at the Paceville Junction. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

The next day, I got a bus at Mellieha at 7.45am and arrived in Valletta at five to nine passing through all the villages from St Paul’s Bay to Msida. I can report that around 96 per cent of passengers now use the bus card and traffic was smooth all the way.

There were policemen at key points and maybe those 45 minutes made all the difference, from mayhem to serenity. And maybe too car drivers are either keeping to the main arteries and creating traffic jams or else try to beat the system taking all sorts detours, like passing through Bidnija and Zebbiegh to beat the traffic at Burmarrad.

Unless the government, whichever one it is, dedicates far more money, this country will never get to solve its traffic mayhem.

We can see where the penny-pinching of the past has led us to.

• Roads that lack a good surface

• Roads that lack road markings

• And then the worst solution of the penny-pinchers: when in doubt throw in a roundabout.

Ask yourselves whether most of the traffic jams are actually being created by roundabouts. I know for sure that the road from Naxxar to our office or vice-versa is bedevilled by three roundabouts on the way.

Now, to my mind, roundabouts are many times the response of idle minds and people with no funds where the situation calls, for instance, for an underpass to allow everyone to go his way.

The traffic situation calls for a strong government that refuses to give in to lobbies rather than what happened in the past when the August Presence that resides at San Anton pushed with all her might for a bridge over the Sta Venera Bypass (it is still not there) and all sorts of traffic lights along Malta’s main artery. Imagine the Brits putting up traffic lights on the M1.

The present government which got to power by promising all sorts of everything to everyone cannot be that government. The Opposition, which is well on its way to become what the Labour Movement was pre-2013, risks not being that government either.

It is useless for Dr Muscat to mention Singapore where you only get a new car if your name comes up in a lottery. He will not do that. I subscribe to Dr Busuttil’s call for cheaper petrol and not so much to his plea to allow motorini on the roads as neither expedient will solve the chaos on the roads.

Dr Muscat is right, we must not think of Malta with 400,000 inhabitants: we have to factor in the foreign presence.

Even the roads created by the 27-year PN government need upgrading, let alone the rest. Consider: the main roads created by the PN lack consistency: not all have bicycle lanes, their lighting system dates the roads, ie tells you when that stretch was done.

A serious government will be the one that does not promise the earth, but one that promises what can be checked and measured. Find the main problem points and solve them, one at a time.

And keeps telling the people: if you are in a traffic jam, it’s all your collective fault. If you don’t want this mess, be prepared to pay far more than you are paying. And prepare to sacrifice your jealously-guarded freedom for the sake of the community.

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