Parking - A Question Of Whose City This Is

Every time parking comes up in Valletta, someone sighs. Cars, congestion, quarrels. As if it were a matter for a few people.

It is not. Parking in a residential city is a question about people. The nurse who comes to your mother on the fourth floor - does she find somewhere to stop? Your daughter when she comes on Sunday with the children - does she find somewhere to park? A resident who makes it home at night with the shopping, or with a child asleep in the back?

And it is not only visitors. The resident himself, after a long day of work, or after an emergency that forced him out and back in the middle of the night, deserves to find somewhere to leave the car near where he lives. Residential parking is not a luxury. It is a need.

The resident treated as a visitor

For whole years, Valletta has been treated as a place for everyone except the people who live in it. Every platform that swallows a parking space, every hotel that opens and grabs space, every ministry that grabs a parking spot - or two - every scheme that treats the resident like a day tourist. The same message. You are here on tolerance.

Elderly residents feel it most. In a city where the population is ageing, a long walk with bags in your hands is not the same thing for everyone. Many say their relatives stopped coming to visit, because there is nowhere to park nearby and every visit risks a fine. A punishment for having a family.

Where were the elected?

One question remains unanswered. The elected members of the Local Council, in whom the people entrusted their vote - why did they never push for residents’ parking to be kept, or restored? Why did they never insist on a clear master plan for the city?

We did it. We have been doing it. We still do it.

A plan, not empty words

ResidentiBeltin’s proposal has been on the table since 2019. The outer ring of the city serves visitors, deliveries and events. The inner streets remain reserved for the people who live in them. A clear permit on the windscreen, honest enforcement against abuse, “clamping” for those who break the rules - and the same rules for everyone.

Spaces kept for nurses, doctors, veterinarians and the police, so that care reaches people. Temporary permits when the resident’s car is in for repairs and the resident has to rent a car. Space for motorcycles, so they stop taking over the pavements. Loading zones for shops, so traders stop losing their mornings to blocked roads. One parking space per ministry, not three. And a published inventory of every space in the city, so residents can finally see what has been lost and what remains.

The measure

One measure should decide every choice about parking: does it make it easier or harder to live in the city? Not to visit it. Not to run a bar in it. To live in it.

A city where residents cannot park near their own homes is a city telling them, politely and fine after fine, to leave. We refuse that conclusion. Parking is not a comfort. For the people who live here, it is part of the right to remain.

So let us ask again: whose city is Valletta? And in the absence of elected members who were supposed to speak and press about all this, but did none of it… we ask: whose are the elected members, and for whom?

This is a ResidentiBeltin note. Share this page together with its web address.