New bid to upgrade public transport

If there is one public service reform that has flopped in the last few years it must be public transport. For the past two years, the disappointing Arriva service has featured prominently in media reports that mainly focused on unreasonable “delays, broken ticketing machines and impractical routes”.

Some of the buses themselves, especially the 18-metre-long bendy ones, are not quite the modern vehicles that were promised when the reform was launched in 2011. Some car users find it exceedingly difficult to overtake these long buses that were discarded from the London roads only to end up on our narrow town and village roads.

It is therefore a welcome move that the new Minister for Transport announced a new phase of consultation with the public in an attempt to put the public transport reforms back on track. Now it is even more important than ever before to get the transport reform to deliver the benefits that it has so far failed to do.

The evidence of this failure is the apparently increasing use of private cars on Malta’s roads since the new transport system was inaugurated in July 2011.

Those who had the option just gave up on the use of public transport and kept using their cars even if this hurt their pockets. Those who have no option but to use public transport suffer in silence hoping that one day they will not only have comfortable buses but that these buses will run on time.

The economic impact of a poor bus service has rarely been discussed even if there are clear signs of the consequences that various people suffer as a result of delays.

Some workers and students are still occasionally reporting late for work or school. Others are often forced to leave home much earlier than is really necessary to cope with the frequent delays that characterise the Arriva services on certain routes.

Tourists can be seen sweating in hot bus shelters waiting for buses to take them to their destination. No wonder many are resorting to social media and travel websites to vent their frustration. This is not the kind of publicity that Malta needs to project to those who plan visiting our island.

The reform of the taxi services does not seem to have made much difference to those who should have been enticed to use this public transport service. Competition in the taxi service remains restricted and neither locals nor visitors are inclined to consider this means of transport as extensively as is the case in some other countries. There was, of course, some notable improvement, especially in the attitude of public transport employees as well as the levels of comfort offered on some buses.

It must also be said that on some routes the service has improved substantially over the past few months. But the expectations of a high quality service that were created in the launching of this reform were never translated into real customer satisfaction.

It is important that this second time round, Transport Malta should be more realistic in what it promises to deliver. It should also be more humble in listening to the suggestions of thousands of normal people who depend so much on public transport.

One hopes that when the consultation process is over, the Ministry of Transport communicates its action plan to improve the service with deadlines that are achievable and service levels that are guaranteed.