Arriva has nothing to celebrate

On July 3, I opted to use the service by Arriva for the first time. I had my car in for a service and not wanting to disrupt any family members’ schedules I reasoned the circumstances presented a situation to try out the reformed bus service.

All I needed was to get from Xemxija to Attard by 8.30 a.m. A year on since their inception, surely they must have had sorted out any teething problems. Consulting the Arriva website everything augured well as it’s very informative and one can get all the details to plan a journey. I needed to take the 41 or 42 bus from Xemxija to Mosta Technopark and from there the no. 202 or 203 to Attard. Again from their website and from the schedule affixed next to the bus stop the 41/42 buses should run every 10 minutes.

At 6.51, I was at the Simar bus stop, in a way looking forward to experience this public service. I had programmed to take the 7.04 bus, which, if the journey as listed in their website takes 36 minutes, should get me to Attard reasonably ahead of schedule.

Well, I can confirm that Arriva are still as unreliable as ever. All that promise of good service promoted on the website was very short-lived. To cut a long story short, I waited for one hour and seven minutes for the first 41 or 42 bus to show up and when it did I had to squeeze in as it was bursting at the seams. I had, like many others on board, to travel all the way standing, clinging to the handrail trying not to be thrown off balance with every braking instance.

I could not help wondering how the elderly and the disabled would manage with such a poor service. Astonishingly, people on the bus seemed calm and there weren’t any complaints going on. I asked some adolescents standing next to me what was the reason for the bus being so late. Maybe the Arriva personnel were celebrating their first anniversary? They immediately detected my naïveness with the service and asserted me that it was the norm. “There is nothing we can do about it. We’re used to it, no one cares, and we just look forward to the time when we get the driving licence.” There is no point in describing the rest of the journey which got me to my final destination 15 minutes late.

I challenge whoever is responsible to prove me wrong. It is unacceptable that out of the six buses that should have passed through Xemxija on the 41 or 42 route between 6.51 and 7.58 a.m. on July 3, only one turned up. It is unacceptable that a 12km journey took me almost two hours with the waiting time. Are there any organisational audits carried out? Who evaluates them? Who takes action?

I will never use Arriva again as their service is truly unreliable and uncomfortable. A far cry from public transport services in many European cities. I can do this because I have options; unfortunately, many do not and Arriva is maltreating those students, young people, elderly and others who for some reason cannot use any other means to commute. Are the authorities ignoring these situations?

No wonder the increase in traffic. Most probably, the reduced pollution by scrapping the old buses and introducing the new buses with cleaner Euro V engines is surpassed by emissions from private car use, which has increased dramatically.