I wish to complain about the service that Arriva is “providing”.

While we were promised a better service, the main purpose was to encourage more people to use the public transport. The opposite is happening in some areas, especially at the Buġibba terminus.

When we had the old public transport the service from Buġibba was excellent and in fact I think it was the best on the island. You could board a bus every 10 minutes to Valletta but now the buses stop to pick up passengers as they are making a circular route. The situation now is that all the buses travelling from Valletta through the central areas of Msida and Birkirkara are held up in traffic so these buses take about one and a half hours to arrive in Buġibba. Last week, my nephew, who wanted to travel to Naxxar, waited for 50 minutes for Bus No. 31. In the end he had to phone his mother to drive him there.

Arriva is providing a bus from Wardija to Buġibba – which, by the way, is always empty – so that commuters would be able to catch Bus No. 31 to Mater Dei. What actually happens is that these passengers have to wait for about an hour before they can board the bus. I suggest that the bus from Wardija picks up the passengers from the bus terminus in Buġibba and takes them to a central location.

I think that one of the reasons why Arriva is not efficient is because most routes are circular and it is taking them too long to arrive at their destination.