Melissa Bagley
Malta’s National Transport Master Plan 2030 consultation document uses the right vocabulary: sustainability, efficiency, climate adaptation, low-emission mobility. Yet, beneath the rhetoric lies a familiar contradiction. The plan recognises that car-dominated transport is failing us, clogging our streets, polluting our air, eroding community life, yet, it still tiptoes around the one change that truly matters: reallocating space away from private vehicles and towards people.
For decades, Malta has doubled down on widening roads, expanding parking and facilitating ever more cars. Even Transport Malta’s own consultation document concedes that this approach has reached a dead end: on a small and densely populated island, you simply cannot build your way out of congestion. Still, instead of committing decisively to public transport, walking, cycling and shared mobility, the document falls back on appeals to “awareness”. We cannot awareness-raise our way out of traffic.
If Malta is serious about a cleaner, healthier and more efficient mobility system, it must embrace the well-established Mobility Pyramid, placing walking, cycling and public transport at the top of policy priorities and private cars at the very bottom. This is evidence-based planning.
A European study by EIT Urban Mobility published in 2024 shows that active mobility yields between €850 and €1,170 in health benefits per person each year. Even modest increases in physical activity translate to major public health savings. Public transport, meanwhile, is the backbone of sustainable mobility, reducing car dependency, improving safety and supporting local shops.
This requires something our PL and PN political class has long avoided: taking road space away from cars and giving it to people. Wide, usable, tree-lined pavements, connected cycle lanes, protected bus corridors, slower residential streets and welcoming public spaces are not cosmetic touches. They are the building-blocks of safe, liveable towns. The fact that the average trip in Malta is just 6.1 kilometres makes all this feasible.
Improving cycling conditions is particularly vital
Successive governments have repeatedly ignored expert recommendations. The government commissioned 2007 Halcrow Report made a clear and sensible proposal: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) along high-demand corridors. Yet, because BRT requires reallocating road space from cars to buses, successive governments shelved it in favour of fantasy projects most notably an eye-wateringly expensive metro proposal, sometimes absurdly paired with an undersea tunnel to Gozo.
These ideas offer political convenience because they implicitly promise that nothing will change above ground, avoiding stepping on toes and caving-in to egoistic self-centred individualism at the expense of the common good. They also ignore basic realities: Malta’s short distances, high energy costs, vulnerability to flooding and extreme heat and the enormous fiscal burden of underground rail infrastructure.
BRT, by contrast, has repeatedly been shown, including in recent Malta-specific studies, to be the fastest, most flexible and most cost-effective means of delivering high-quality public transport. When combined with feeder buses, park-and-ride facilities and robust cycling and pedestrian connections, BRT can provide metro-level service without metro-level debt. Crucially, it can be delivered in years, not decades.
Improving cycling conditions is particularly vital. European research consistently finds that secure, abundant bicycle parking next to public transport hubs, together with safer roads, is among the most effective ways to boost bike-and-ride trips.
The master plan ends with a vision of a transport system that enhances quality of life while protecting our natural heritage. We share this vision. But vision without action is useless. The minister responsible for transport too often contradicts the very goals declared in the plan. Malta cannot achieve sustainability while continuing to privilege private cars at every turn.
A people-first mobility strategy, built on BRT, safe cycling networks, pedestrian-friendly streets, congestion reduction and community-centred planning is not radical. It is overdue. Malta has the knowledge, the evidence and the need. What has been missing is the political courage to say, clearly and unapologetically, that our streets belong to people.
Time is up. Malta must choose. Who will bell the cat?
Melissa Bagley is the ADPD-The Green Party deputy chairperson and candidate for Birżebbuġa.
First published in timesofmalta.com 28 December 2025
