It’s time to get on board (1)

I will just come right out and say it. I am not Maltese. I am here as a student intern working with Heritage Malta for a little over a month. To avoid the bus problem I have taken the ferry to and from Sliema to Valletta each day. So far, this has worked well but a few days ago I had to get to the University of Malta to finish off some research. I didn’t get there.

This is not just a list of complaints but serious concerns for the travel of non-Maltese within Malta. One of the biggest draw cards of coming to Malta is that I didn’t need to drive, that’s what I thought. I did ask myself why do the Maltese have such an obsession with their cars. It’s in case the long arm of economic rationalism dressed up as modernism comes to the party in Malta.

On what should have been my short journey to the library at the University, the cheery man at the bus stop gave me the wrong information. The University was not the last stop. He also had no maps or pamphlets, nothing at all to help the average commuter, let alone the non-Maltese traveller. After having asked the bus driver if he was in fact going to the University and asking him to stop there, he said he was. Great, I thought, surely all the complaints of these whingers have been overblown exaggerations. Arriva has finally got on board.

The bus did not stop near where I thought the University was. On asking the bus driver if we had passed the University he said we had not, the University stop is at the end of the section. Ok, I sit down again. What is a section and where is a piece of paper explaining it? There aren’t any instructions in Maltese, let alone English. The bus continued. I waited. I was lost and I had no way of finding out where I was in relation to where I needed to be. The bus got back to Valletta and I asked the driver sarcastically if we had passed the University. He answered yes, without a hint of irony.

I am aware that not everybody speaks English. I feel terrible at not having a good grasp of other languages myself. But, surely, Arriva could have managed to pay a small amount of money on printing some guides that explain the bus routes, perhaps even with street names and a map, maybe even with stop numbers, for those who are not familiar with the intimacies of Malta’s dense geography.

At first I thought that the people who were upset with the bus situation were just not adapting to change well and, after some teething troubles, Arriva would overcome the old system of owner-run buses. I now have my doubts. Maybe the old, hot, crowded buses were not so bad after all. At least, they could get through the narrow streets well enough. Every person I work with in Valletta is affected by this problem and for many the last few days of travel to work have been an ordeal of over 90 minutes. On a large scale this cannot be good for Malta. The bus that I travelled on had advertisements for Arriva, to the effect of, “use us to travel to the airport”. At least, Arriva has a sense of humour but, not likely, the bus driver may just decide not to stop there at all!

In the back of my mind as I sat in the very cold bus was that about 30 per cent of Malta’s gross domestic product derives from tourism. That is a lot of money in uncertain financial times. I can see the travel guides of the future warning against taking buses within Malta as they are unreliable and difficult to use. That would be a shame. It would be a shame if the average (annoying though we may be) English-speaking tourist couldn’t get around to experience Malta and the Maltese way of living.

It is an even bigger shame that, in such a small country, during unsettling environmental times, so many people need to drive in order to travel a short way to get to work due to a terrible transport system.

Surely, Arriva should be compensating commuters until they can deliver a product that is on time and works properly.

Arriva: It’s time to get on board.