Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/587664
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2015 16 News I f by some trick of illusion – or by dint of the fact that you've been living under a rock for the last decade or so – you haven't yet noticed that Malta has a traffic problem, you must have cottoned on this fact by now. It would have been hard not to, what with the government implementing Budget measures to tackle that very problem last week. Apart from the fact that – you know – making your way across the island in any kind of vehicle, public or private, is becoming all but impossible during particular times of day. But while there are plenty of pie-in-the-sky solutions that we could conjure up for this pervasive problem – improved roads, costly introduction of alternative public transportation methods and politi- cally suicidal measures on keeping certain cars off our roads at cer- tain times – these would have to be planned in the long term. And never mind the fact that long term solutions are 'politically' bound up in every sense of that loaded word… this also means that we re- main stuck with the status quo in the short term. But perhaps emboldened by the moral and organisational support offered by the phenomenon of so- cial media, an ever-growing group of individuals is getting together to change the narrative of how we tackle traffic. As with all social media initia- tives and experiments, it becomes difficult to tell what, exactly, was the flashpoint that led to this big change. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist – or in this case, some sort of urban planning/trans- portation expert – to notice that we've reached crisis point. And crises, like necessity, are the mother of invention. Enough is enough One of the key meeting points of this would-be movement was the Facebook group 'No Traffic 4 Me'. Founded by Ryan Saliba under the slogan 'If you want change, start doing so yourself!', it amassed over 1,700 'Likes' ever since it was first set up on 10 October – just over a week ago. Though the focus of the Page is ostensibly on cycling – its tagline is 'Ride to Uni. Ride to Work. Invite 2 friends to do the same! Let's beat traffic together!' – it seems to have been a good catalyst to get people thinking about alterative methods of transportation to the car – un- fortunately the default method for most of the island's inhabitants, and the key reason we got into this mess in the first place. Apart from going on a literal promotional drive – by strapping a paper with '# NO TRAFFIC 4 ME' to his backpack to drum up aware- ness – Saliba opened up the space to suggestions of visitors to discuss alternative routes and offer up their own suggestions. That other handy internet invention, Google Maps, helped quantify distances travelled and showed that cycling is hardly an impossible alternative for most. But one user took things a step further (again, quite literally). Hav- ing only just recently got her driv- ing license, and as exasperated by the traffic situation as anyone else, Suzanne Maas decided to under- take a five-day experiment with her Isla to Gzira work commute. This decision was triggered couple of weeks ago, "that day when the first week of school and a rainy thunderstorm gridlocked the en- tire country". Already realising that taking the car wasn't even an option that day, Maas decided to take the bus. But even that proved to be a non-starter, as 45 minutes into the journey, Maas and her fel- low travellers were still stuck at Paola Square. "That's when I decided that it would probably be better to leave the bus and walk to work," Maas said. "Another 45 minutes later, after a walk that took me through Marsa, Hamrun and Msida, I arrived at work in Gzira. I was still the first to arrive, as my colleagues were all stuck in traffic and terribly late; some of them took two and a half hours to get from home to work." It was during that fateful walk that Maas began to contemplate the idea of trying out various meth- ods of transport and document- ing them online. These included walking, the bus, the car itself and Maas's self-confessed "favourite": the combination of the bicycle and ferry. The most striking take-away finding from all this: barring the bus, all of the other options took less time than going by car (yes, that includes walking). "I understand sometimes the car can be very convenient, as when before or after work you need to pick up or drop off someone or s o m e t h i n g . H o w e v e r , for most p e o p l e this is not the case eve- ry day," M a a s said, add- ing that another ben- efit of eschew- ing the car is that you're automatically going for the more environ- mentally friendly option. Baby steps Happily, it is not only one-off individual experiences that are coming out during this traffic cri- sis. Kevin Farrugia, one half of the Incredible Web start-up, founded Bum-A-Lift (http://www.bum-a- lift.com) – also in an attempt to alleviate the traffic problem. Es- sentially a more centralized system for carpooling, its social media-en- abled interface is yielding positive results, particularly among parents of schoolchildren taking advan- tage of its 'Bum a Lift to School' sub-site. According to Farrugia, car-pool- ing is a simple, commonsense solu- tion to alleviating at least a portion of daily traffic on our roads. "A recent study showed that over 24,000 cars travel daily through Tigne. If 10% of those were on Bum a Lift, we would have on aver- age more than one ride per minute. We expect people to realise that they are able to contribute and be the solution that they are looking for," Farrugia said. How to fix traffic Commuters pitch in their ideas Forget the gimmicks: here's what No Traffic 4 Me and Maas came up with: Showers and bicycle parking at places of work • Safer pavements and cycling lanes • More priority lanes for buses • Free wi-fi on public transport • Minibus services for commuters RANKED Transport options Suzanne Maas ranked her Isla to Gzira work commute according to transportation methods • Bus: 1 hour 30 minutes • Car: 1 hour 15 minutes • Walking: 1 hour 10 minutes • Ferry and bicycle: 40 minutes • Cycling: 35 minutes M Aided by social media, something resembling a citizen's movement is rising up to tackle the island's traffic problem head-on. TEODOR RELJIC speaks to some would-be pioneers of DIY transportation alternatives for a car- clogged Malta Guerilla clogged country commuting for a Suzanne Maas ditched her car and found cycling trumped all options