Last week, I uploaded a post on my social media, asking whether the roadworks in Tal-Barrani were completed. However, my post related more to the flow of traffic rather than the completion of works, because I noticed a higher rate of waiting time relative to last year and before the summer recess.
Indeed, I kept thinking. While I drive to work in the morning, I observe the flow of traffic. Let’s forget about the random accidents in Marsa, because by default such events increase the waiting time in traffic. The design of the traffic lights and road diversions on Triq Tal-Barrani has actually increased the morning traffic waiting time, rather than reduced it. Before, it used to take me 25 minutes to commute from Ħal Tarxien to Santa Venera. Now, it is double the waiting time. It takes me 25 minutes to get out of Ħal Tarxien to Tal-Barrani in the morning. Prior to the new project it only took me 10 minutes to get out of my adoptive village. And this compared to last year and during the schooling period too.
Needless to say, the government’s intentions to provide an efficient road network for private and public transportation are reasonable, and crucially essential for productivity and efficiency. However, if the authorities are not going to start employing proper economists in the planning and design process, whatever they will do or propose to try to solve the traffic problem, simply will not work. The issue here isn’t the road infrastructure upgrades, the road network widening or the construction of flyovers. These are commendable and were badly needed to solve the traffic problems in the short run. Also, they were crucial for the upgrade of our infrastructure, and to advance economically as a nation. However, we had to do these road network upgrades 25 years ago.
Today, the world is moving towards sustainability, and the biggest push is coming from the EU. However, sustainability cannot be achieved by technological innovations alone, and this applies to the road network upgrade and the building of flyovers, too. I reiterate that these upgrades were needed. However, such upgrades must have been accompanied by a continuous process of behavioural and institutional adjustments. Had this been carried out over two decades, we would be better off as a nation. Let’s take the Jevons paradox in economic theory, and what it says. It states that in the long run an increase in the efficiency gained in time due to a road network upgrade, will produce an additional increase in the demand, that is, an increase in the consumption use of the new road networks, rather than a decrease. The end result leads to more traffic because the rate of demand is higher. In the short-term, the road network upgrades and efficiency improvements are effective, but not for long. However, in the long run authorities must adjust differently due to what is called the rebound effect.
True, there might be problems to measure the rate of efficiency change relative to the change in the increase in demand, due to different assumptions and parameters. However, the result of the Jevons paradox is clearly visible on our road network, and even EU networks. If with the road network upgrade, traffic is still a problem, it is obviously attributed to a higher increase in the rate of change in demand relative to the rate of efficiency. It was clear from the outset, that the road network upgrade, would have only solved Malta’s traffic problem in the short run, especially in the south of Malta. In the long run, we have had, and must continue to invest in alternative transportation systems.
When the PL government started fixing Malta’s dilapidated road network, nobody ever thought that the electorate will forget the poor quality of road infrastructure we had to endure over the years. And let’s not kid ourselves. This has nothing to do with having more people working and living in Malta. This is just a populist narrative to make people believe untrue political discourse. I am 43 years old, and I remember the traffic lights at the Marsa junction, across the former supermarket Save-On, completely jammed in the early 1990s. My contemporaries know well, where the former Save-On supermarket was situated. What followed, though, was a temporary solution by fixing a set of traffic lights. It is obvious that when a country progresses economically, and it becomes more affluent, traffic jams pile up.
Certainly, when the market was liberalised, people made more money, and private vehicles became more affordable. Also, the financial and banking system made access to credit easier for private households to borrow and purchase private vehicles. Besides, over the span of 25 years, the PN never invested in a proper mass transportation system. Indeed, when 20 years ago I used to commute from Bormla to Msida for my 8 o’clock lecture, I was always late. The traffic jam that piled up from Għajn Dwieli tunnel to Corradino roundabout was excruciatingly painful.
Today, it is not any better. And we were less people, working and living in Malta. So do not fall for a populist narrative. What I mean here is that unless the government takes bold decisions, invests in new mode of transportation and in tandem introduces institutional and behavioural changes, the traffic problem will never be solved. It is here to stay, like it settled in other EU countries. The PL must not do the same mistakes of the PN. Progress means changing even attitudes, but for the better.
Investing in a better and a more efficient public transportation system, would solve the problem in the short run. The free public transportation did not solve the problem. We must do a quantum leap and opt to use the water transportation system along our eastern coast. And I am saying this because the attainment of efficiency through more public land transportation, would increase demand and erode the rate of efficiency by having additional buses on the road network. In the long run it would also suffer from the Jevons paradox. We must blend public water and land transportation to ease the traffic problem in Malta. We have to think differently. Otherwise, it is going to be quite difficult for us to live peacefully in Malta. We must invest in better water infrastructure, and the money spent on free public transportation could be diverted or ring-fenced to aid in building such infrastructure.
Sorry, for being blunt. However, this is the reality!