A Transport Malta report, drawn up before the government decided to pedestrianise Bisazza Street in Sliema, had recommended that buses make use of this road.
“On May 9, TM engineers submitted a report examining three options – full pedestrianisation, partial pedestrianisation and doing nothing –with the preferred option being partial pedestrianisation allowing only buses to go through Bisazza Street,” Transport Malta said yesterday.
The authority confirmed that the street was engineered to support buses passing through it.
The newly-paved and embellished street is currently a pedestrian-only zone but that will only last until July 3 when the new public transport system gets on the road.
On the inauguration of the upgrading works, Resources Minister George Pullicino had announced that the street would be fully pedestrianised. However, controversy arose when public transport company Arriva immediately put its foot down saying this was not possible as the routes were set in the contract it had with Transport Malta.
The government then conceded that the new buses would pass through for a brief period only, starting on July 3, until a re-routing solution was found.
Leading the talks with Arriva on this issue is Transport Minister Austin Gatt.
However, the government is mum on how long it will take to find a solution and didn’t exclude it might take months. Its priority at this stage is to get the new public transport system up and running and it was an “intentionally tight” schedule, according to Emanuel Delia, the Transport Ministry’s Head of Secretariat.
Mr Delia said that just because the buses were currently passing through the Tigné tunnel, it didn’t mean Arriva were being stubborn by flagging up the problems of diverting traffic from Bisazza Street.
This diversion, he explained, would lengthen the bus ride by five minutes, setting off a “chain reaction” as 67 buses would be using the Tigné route a total of 479 times daily.
The buses, of different route numbers, have five minutes of buffer time between one trip and another at the stations, meaning that the new diversion would causes buses coming from Sliema to lose that grace time. Even a one-minute delay on the return trip would make the next trip late.
To counter this scenario, the bus company would need to buy two 12-metre buses and an 18-metre articulated bus, as well as employing another 10 drivers to man them. This, Mr Delia said, was not a simple task as the buses had to be Euro-5 compliant and air-conditioned while the drivers had to speak in Maltese and understand English, have a clean conduct sheet and pass the driving assessment.
The whole service needs 600 drivers, 562 of which are already on board, while another 45 are in training. Only 175 drivers of these have worked as bus drivers before.
Mr Delia said the discussions were still centred around the government’s wish to have a high-standard, efficient, punctual bus service and the government was “working flat out” to meet these requirements.
Another issue, he said, was the need to upgrade the onboard computers, which tell passengers what the next stop is, as they would have to reflect the new routes.
Arriva will have to be compensated for the route changes but there is no indication how much this will cost, nor when its buses might be expected to stop using Bisazza Street.
Meanwhile, Sliema deputy mayor Cyrus Engerer urged the government and Arriva to reach a compromise to have Bisazza Street pedestrianised, as a bus passing by every two-and-a-half minutes would present a hazard for pedestrians.