Malta's transport environment has been in the news as of late, with several parliamentary questions focused on different elements of the sector.

This newspaper has already written about one such element this week: a Transport Malta study which somehow found just one instance of overcrowding on Malta's buses across 2024 and 2025 - a reality that not even the minister responsible for Transport, Chris Bonett, could accept.

Bonett himself said that he is "not happy" with the data, remarking that it does not add up with the complaints he hears when talking to people from all around the country on the national bus network.

But another PQ saw the PN's Shadow Minister for Sustainable Mobility, Ivan Castillo, also ask Minister Bonett whether the national parking and travel demand strategy has been completed and if he could table it to Parliament in its next plenary session.

Castillo observed that nowadays, according to a recently published study, the average cruising time for drivers to find a parking spot ranges between six and twelve minutes, and so he questioned what government will be doing to address these frequent "wastes of time" on the road.

In response, Bonett said that parking difficulties will be addressed through measures coming in the next two years, as part of the government's Malta in Motion plan.

Agreeing with Opposition MP Castillo, he said that "our biggest challenge moving forward, some say it's the time going from A to B, but it's parking."

It's a blanket statement which perhaps does not strike the right balance between the issues that people face on a day-to-day basis on Malta's roads.

Parking is a serious problem, that is a fact.

Residents in many localities find themselves having to go round in circles on a daily or nightly basis in order to try and find a place to park, while garage prices have gone through the roof as the demand for more convenience increases.

Realistically, the biggest solution here is not anything within the remit of the Transport Minister, but rather within the remit of the Planning Minister.  Residential areas around the country have had a proliferation of apartment buildings replacing old maisonettes or terraced houses - and that has driven an increase in population in those areas.

The problem today is due to the fact that there is no hard and fast obligation for a new apartment block to offer enough garages to make sure that the people living in that block have their parking needs catered for.  Developers can simply pay a fine to make up for the lack of parking, and be done with it. 

There are, of course, other solutions that can be factored in, but this is a key issue that should be addressed.

But is it right to say that the biggest challenge is parking, rather than getting from A to B?  Malta's roads are clogged: each morning is a parade of traffic through Malta's main thoroughfares - Google Maps' live traffic feature lights up like a Christmas tree from 7am onwards.

On any given day during the week, a bumper to bumper crash may cause someone's commute to double in time spent sitting in traffic. 

One cannot underestimate the effect that this has on people on a daily basis: frustration grows as they waste time in traffic, pollution increases and air quality drops, and workplace productivity is also affected.

According to the National Statistics Office, the stock of licensed motor vehicles increased at a net average rate of 36 motor vehicles per day during the first quarter of 2026.  That rate of increase has remained essentially the same since the second quarter of 2025. 

These numbers simply aren't sustainable, and until they are brought under control - and in fact until we see more people ditching their cars - people will not see any change of fortunes in their commute times.

Bonett has something of an unenviable job in bringing some control to this sector - one must wait and see if his plans are up to the task, or if they will barely scratch the surface.