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THE GOZO TIMES - The Times of Malta - 8th November 2004
Capital Traffic
Recently the debate about the increasingly intolerable traffic situation in Victoria seems to be experiencing a renaissance. There have been a few suggestions on how to improve things by diverting unnecessary traffic from the centre. These range from a quite realistic bypass or even ring road of sorts to the somewhat Utopian idea of a tunnel.
Apparently all roads lead to Victoria, forcing a great number of vehicles to use the capital’s main roads merely as thoroughfares on their way to other destinations on the island. Heavily loaded trucks transporting building material and skips compete with delivery vans, coaches and private cars for the space that one lane each way provides.
To this pass-through traffic add the scores of commuters that enter Victoria by car, day in day out, contributing to the appalling air quality that reigns supreme: a couple of hundred metres’ walk down Republic Street supplies you with enough second-hand smoke to make the smoking ban in bars look silly. Opening a window for fresh air has long lost the true sense of its meaning and tortured engines of heavy trucks passing underneath kill any conversation in progress.
Another much-hyped car-free day has come and gone without leaving much of a mark, at least not a desirable one. Closing arterial roads to traffic during rush hour without offering alternatives achieves nothing but a negative response. Why did the authorities and participating local councils not go one step further and made provisions for public transport to be upgraded to reasonable proportions for this one day? Perhaps the response could have even served as an eye-opener for whoever is responsible for those idiosyncratic timetables in the first place!
While an excellent opportunity was missed there, perhaps our environment-conscious local councils could come up with an initiative all by themselves, with a little help by the Public Transport Authority? For instance, a minibus shuttle service between the villages and Victoria could be introduced on a trial basis, or maybe a continuous ring service encompassing several villages. The present system where it can take a staggering 45 minutes to travel the distance of three kilometres (from Gharb to Victoria, tried and tested!) can certainly not lure motorists into leaving their wheels at home!
It is sad to notice that everyone involved in the organisation of the car-free event joined proudly in the popular chorus of how important it is to safeguard our environment – but still nobody seems to be prepared to pay more than lip service to it.
