Efficient public transport is the backbone of a modern and competitive society. After many years of fancy old yellow and grey fuming buses cruising around the island mostly to the pleasure of tourists, the PN government has introduced a reform of public transport, not by its own will, but as usual after pressure from the European Union. Minister Austin Gatt promised a revolution in public transport, and citizens got the counter revolution instead.
The public transport revolution totally failed for many reasons: routings have been drafted by Transport Malta without any consultations with public society, local councils, commuters and transport specialists: it has been drafted by people who never took buses in their live. The public was promised a modern fleet of buses of different sizes, introducing environmental friendly buses (hybrid-, norm 5, electric). Instead some outdated Chinese buses with norm 4 have been introduced, a few hybrid buses, and other buses so huge in size that they became the European laughing stock: routes had to be changed, roundabouts redesigned. The funny thing is that Malta inherited the bendy buses from London which have been taken out of service for security reasons. Modern display of arrival time at bus stopped were promised, the display are there since start of the revolution, showing nothing. Bus shelters are still non existent in many locations, displayed time tables totally outdated.
Discrimination of racists grounds has been introduced, non Maltese looking commuters (blond and blue eyes, or black, Asian,..) are obliged to show either a Maltese ID card or birth certificate in case of under age children in order to benefit from the local tariffs. EU is still considering the legality of such discrimination.
After almost 20 months of post revolution, public transport remains a failure: in the actual scenario, it is impossible to plan timely a journey: bus numbers, routes and time tables keep on changing, information displayed on bus stops, on Arriva website is not always up-to-date, drivers can not give information about timetables and connections, buses often do not turn up at all. Actually Arriva will never be in the position to deliver a modern public transport due to the existing environment: there are no bus lanes, buses are not prioritised and remain stuck in traffic jams during peak hours.
We were promised a public transport revolution: we did not get it and have to rely on our cars, bikes and horses more than ever.
If I would have had my word to say, I would have asked the tendering companies to draft a modern public transport service based on the existing local infra structure, I would have introduced bus priority lanes on all heavily used roads during peak hours, I would have made public transport free of charge financed by higher road registration and petrol taxes.
