Some lines of communications between members of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, seem to have experienced some issues these past few days.

Or maybe the Transport Minister is being kept in the dark as to what the government’s plans are.

Last Monday, Transport Minister Aaron Farrugia said that the metro project, which was launched by the government before the election, was still on the government’s agenda. He also said that when the Prime Minister expressed concern about traffic issues he was referring to the time it took for cars involved in accidents to be removed.

But, only a few days ago, in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana was not so clear that the metro system is on the government’s mind. When he was asked about the metro, as well as the Gozo-Malta tunnel, and whether they have been pushed back, Caruana would only reply “with a smile to your question”. Asked to elaborate, he said “It’s quite obvious no? It’s about priorities”.

To us, that means that Caruana was giving a strong hint that, for the time being, the metro system and the building of a tunnel linking Malta to Gozo have been placed on the back burner. For Caruana, there are other priorities that the government must deal with at the moment. In fact, the government has embarked on a plan to cut spending, and ministries have been asked to reduce their expectations.

With regard to traffic issues, the Prime Minister did make the point that there are occasions when traffic accidents in major arterial roads are one reason why the number of cars accumulates and people take much longer than necessary to reach their destination.

But the Prime Minister also said there are other reasons why traffic jams continue to be a huge problem. For example, Abela said that there could have been better traffic management when major infrastructural works are taking place. He also spoke about unnecessary delays in some road works that are being carried out, and that he had given instructions to Infrastructure Malta to push contractors to finish their job in the fastest way possible.

When asked to comment on Abela’s remarks, Farrugia preferred to pick the part of the PM’s answer which dealt with traffic accidents on which, admittedly, the minister has no control. But he does have responsibility to see that projects are finished in time and that any related traffic management creates the least inconvenience possible. He did not say anything about that.

What he did say was that free public transport, introduced on 1 October, was having a positive effect as more commuters were using the bus these days.

On the same day Farrugia said these words, the National Statistics Office reported that nearly 90 per cent of people use their own car to travel to work. Only 3.7% of travellers chose the bus as their preferred mode of transportation.

Admittedly, the statistics were collected before the introduction of the free public transport system. But it’s clear that we a have a long way to go to get our traffic situation in order.

Until then, we huff and puff behind the wheel as we inch our way to wherever we want to go.