Is Daniel Attard being serious when he says he is not convinced that traffic has increased in Malta? Does he really need this to be confirmed by a study?

The Labour MEP drew criticism this week when he implied, on the Labour Party media without being challenged, that there are no traffic issues in Malta and that the infrastructure is handling the situation well.

For one thing, all he has to do is look at statistics published by the National Statistics Office that speak about the number of cars on our roads.

Except for 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic when Malta (and the rest of the world) was experiencing extraordinary times, since 2013 the number of registered cars has increased by more than 10,000 each year, reaching a peak in 2023 when 13,663 new cars were listed.

In 2013, the number of licensed vehicles was 322,960; at the end of 2023, the total had reached 438,567. Does not Attard think that this has led to an increase in traffic issues?

Is he really so "disconnected" from Maltese reality - as the Nationalist Party said he is in a statement which followed Attard's participation on the One radio programme - that he does not realise the difficulties that anyone living in Malta has to face on a daily basis to reach a destination, almost at all times of the day? Does he not know about the hours that are lost in traffic and that many have resorted to leaving home in the morning earlier than necessary and leaving the office long after the working day is over in attempt to beat the traffic?

The irony is that he uttered those insensitive words - insensitive to the thousands of drivers who lose so much time stuck in traffic - in the same week that Malta was at a standstill as a car caught fire on one of the main arteries of the road network and it took hours for the road to be made safe enough again to be reopened.

And this, let us remind Attard, happens quite frequently. Each time that there is an accident on a main carriageway - in particularly the stretch leading from St Andrews to Marsa - the effects on the traffic flow are enormous, which means that the spill-over on the economy and productivity is also great, given that people arrive late for work. Not to mention the impact on the environment caused by pollution.

To be fair, over the last years there have been major projects to widen roads and generally improve the traffic network. But it must also be admitted that these have done little to alleviate traffic issues - simply because traffic piles up somewhere else; "at the next roundabout", is what many drivers will tell you.

More than this, traffic jams are also common because of bad planning, as alternative routes that are advocated are often unable to handle the flow, or are also the venue of other road maintenance work or similar projects. Then again, some projects have taken much longer than estimated to be completed, adding to the drivers' woes.

Attard's words hit a sore point in the collective way of thinking, because it exposes a politician that is distanced from reality.