Arriva still has a long way to go

Being a regular reader in the UK of The Times online I have read a lot about the problems being experienced by Arriva. Noting the criticisms from many I thought that my wife and I would reserve judgement until we had experienced first-hand the service ourselves.

We have been here since the beginning of December and now understand the frustrations of the local people, which include erratic timetables, buses with no number displayed and ticket machines that are broken.

This was compounded by an incident last week, when the bus we were on broke down just outside Buġibba in the dark. The following relief bus stopped to pick us up but before everyone was on board, the doors closed and the bus pulled away, not only leaving us behind but also taking with it the 12-year-old daughter of an English woman who had been busy trying to get her 81-year-old mother from one bus to the other in the rain and cold. The driver of the bus, apparently hearing the cries of the daughter, then stopped 200m down the road and left her in tears by the roadside to make her own way back to her mother.

We’re very grateful to a passing police motorcyclist who stopped, and having assessed the situation, ordered the next bus to take us to Buġibba, which was not his scheduled route.

We read in other letters on The Times that Arriva are considered to be “not quite there yet”. From what we’ve experienced we would respectfully suggest that there is still a long, long way to go before “there” is reached.

We are now using a hire car to get around the island because we personally feel we cannot trust the Arriva buses.