The daily struggle for drivers to find parking is becoming unbearable due to the lack of serious planning for village parking facilities, partly driven by the expectation of free spaces. No serious planning of central car parking complexes is made obligatory on licensed developers once permits are issued for them to erect more flats, showrooms, hotels and restaurants. A heavy reliance on cars is linked to the convenience of using personal vehicles - this is undeniably right. Notice how temperatures are rising, and pressures are mounting on commuters due to the constant ubiquitous traffic that has wiped out any trace of tranquillity, we once knew.

Property barons have long been dictating how spatial planning should be run. What they seem not to understand, or pretend not to understand, is that we collectively need a new way of doing things. We can no longer afford the convenience of those few who want to be able to park (or even double park, a common occurrence) their cars right outside the address they visit. Countries including Australia, China, India and the Philippines expect developers to create adequate parking spaces whenever they put up a new building.

Cupertino in the USA has a requirement in planning permission such that every building, must provide two parking spaces per apartment, one of which must be covered. For a fast-food restaurant, the city demands one space for every three seats, for a bowling alley, seven spaces per lane plus one for every worker. In parts of California, where self-driving cars are allowed to trundle around by themselves, picking up and dropping off person after person, they shall soon render many public car parks unnecessary.

Many current robotaxis are production cars modified with sensors and other hardware, but autonomous vehicle developers have also been working on robotaxis resembling vehicles you might have seen in a sci-fi film. In accordance with genre conventions, robotaxis of the future tend to look like small shuttle buses with sliding doors on each side and feature no driver controls.

Seating is usually arranged conference-style, and the passenger capacity ranges from four to over a dozen. The robotaxis themselves also tend to be symmetrical in profile, so they appear around the same from the front as from the back and can drive in either direction.

Typically, Waymo's driverless cars are already offering 150,000 rides to the public in San Francisco, Phoenix. Waymo has recently run tests in winter weather in Michigan and upstate New York. That solution would be like Alice in Wonderland for tiny Malta. Any long-term solution for a 316 sq. km island with more than 62 cars imported daily (added to a fleet of over 430,000 ICE vehicles) highlights the need for a serious study such as the one Transport Malta financed four  years ago with the publication of a Mass transit underground solution (costing over €6bn).

Now, everyone realizes that the mass transit dream was just that, smoke and no fire. Realistically, we are at a stage where Malta's traffic congestion is no longer an annoyance but a crisis - and crises can only be solved with some difficult decisions. In the past decade, the island has witnessed a sudden explosion in population, there has been a cascading increase in daily commuting rides - hence locals are showered with more carcinogenic fumes (electric vehicles are still expensive accounting for a mere 7% of the fleet - again with few charging points). Is the gradual introduction of robotaxis alien to Malta?

In China, the USA and some cities in northern Europe, this new technology is taking to the roads, and people are not sure what to make of it. Is it safe? If slowly introduced here - how will it get accepted along with other road-users? Will it really shake up the way we travel?

These questions are being asked today about autonomous vehicles (AVs). The same questions were posed, when the first motor cars rumbled onto the roads. Historically, by granting drivers unprecedented freedom, automobiles changed the world.

Now AVs are poised to rewrite the rules of transport. Traditionally, islanders tend to join late in any new transport revolution and since the lobby group of ICE car importers is powerful, one may expect some resistance to change. However, we need to speed our understanding of this wonder car at a juncture that daily commuting is coming to a standstill. We challenge the mentality to change.

Wonderful algorithms (now with deep seek systems) guide such AVs to travel smoothly from point A to point B but, more importantly, optimise overall traffic by allowing robot vehicles to interact with vehicles driven by people. Such algorithm teaches robocars to optimise traffic flow by communicating with each other.

The collective system of AVs aims for smooth traffic flow even as each individual car seamlessly decides when to enter an intersection based on its immediate environment. Because robocars are dispersed among cars driven by people, all traffic is regulated by the algorithm and harmony prevails. There are many levels of sophistication in such cars and for a start a Level 4 is defined as one that can do all driving, without any input from a human driver, within a limited area. A Level 5 vehicle (something that as yet is still under study) is one that can in theory drive anywhere, like a human driver.

The upshot is that advanced AVs on the roads today operate within specific regions of particular cities. Can Malta's chaotic driving patterns adapt themselves for AVs to navigate safely and avoid accidents? The answer depends on the density of AVs on the road. Studies have found that when robot vehicles make up just 5% of traffic in a simulation, traffic jams are eliminated.

The combination of autonomy and ride-hailing, together with a switch to electric vehicles, seems likely to suppress the urge to own one's own car. Autonomous vehicles will be nice for everyone, because they will let people get on with something worthwhile as they travel.

Drivers in certain cities in America or China, have probably spotted driverless cars dropping off passengers. That's a radical change from even three years ago, when these services were still learning the rules of the road. For instance, would passengers prefer to ride alone or would they be willing to share space with people they don't know if the price of that particular robotaxi was significantly lower.

In summary, it is never too late for Malta to consider a gradual introduction of robotaxis as an alternative solution.

George M. Mangion is a senior partner at PKF Malta

gmm@pkfmalta.com