The environment and us

I don’t know if you feel the same as I do, but I am having the subjective perception that our quality of air has seriously degraded during the last few years. Every morning when I drive back from Rabat to Qormi, I can visualize a brown layer of air covering most parts of the island, stretching from Mosta to Naxxar, from Sliema to Marsa. It scares me to think that we all breath these fumes without much realizing it. The other day, I was searching for some figures on air pollution on MEPA’s web site. It clearly shows that their statistic sites has been designed by some IT gurus, showing fancy charts and numbers, without really giving a clear picture. I finally figured out that during 8 days in December 2014, the concentration of Nitrogene Dioxine and Carbon monoxide was clearly above the European Air Quality Standards. Humans can be adversely affected by exposure to air pollutants in ambient air. In response, the European Union has developed an extensive body of legislation which establishes health based standards and objectives for a number of pollutants in air. These legislations should all have been transposed to national laws. Air pollution originates from many sources: traffic, electricity generation, combustion. My subjection impression is that traffic is the main reason for the poor quality of air we enjoy. One does not need to have a PhD to realize that the cheer amount of cars, trucks and buses contribute to this. I am still amazed that in times of mankind flying to the moon, collecting stones on Mars, the different Maltese governments have failed to introduce an alternative to private transport, that the Maltese still need to rely on their private cars to commute. Despite the privatisation of public transport, the introduction of fancy colored oversized buses, no alternatives have been delivered. My recent bus trip from Qormi to St Julians lasted 100 minutes. Miracles are one again expected from the new public transport operator after the first failed revolution, the Spaniards will bring the “smooth” change. Honestly, I can not see how: these buses will be once again been stuck in traffic, thus not been able to respect any schedules and ultimately not been able to convert private car drivers to use public transport. I clearly don’t see any vision on transport from the actual government. I have not seen any public transport policy papers or visions, only monorail studies, bridges and road network extensions.
Simple immediate and “free” solutions exists to solve road congestion: all dual carriage roads only need to have one lane reserved for public transport, the introduction of heavy fines for drivers using bus lanes, the increase of car taxation and price of petrol to increase the public transport subsidy, and finally let the public bus operator design and operate the network without government intervention (you surely remember well when Transport Malta people who never traveled by bus imposed to Arriva the routes and Tumas Group the purchase of clearly oversized buses). I am also lacking to see materialize any alternatives to public transport, maybe the introduction of “velo-lib”, a bicycle rental system used in many European towns, cheaper collective transports like Uber or car pooling would certainly do the trick. I really hope that I will see the day when my bus trip from Qormi to St Julians will only last max. 20 minutes, the bus departing at its scheduled time…