Transport Malta had to cough up nearly €3 million on fixing the bus routes in the first few months of Arriva’s operation, swelling the subsidies the government was giving the company, according to figures seen by Times of Malta.

Within the first two months of Arriva taking over the public transport service in July 2011, the transport regulator had to spend €888,795 to rent new buses and try to make up for the chaos in the new route system.

Then, between November 2011 and January 2012, it forked out €1.9 million from taxpayer money for the lease of an additional 15 buses that Arriva needed to make yet more changes to the routes.

The company’s financial statements, tabled in Parliament by Transport Minister Joe Mizzi on Tuesday, showed that in 2011 Arriva received a total of €9.8 million in subsidies. This was well above the roughly €6 million every year that had been agreed.

Arriva’s operation got off to a bad start when about 56 drivers failed to turn up on their first day of work. This disrupted journeys on most routes and caused a lot of confusion.

Passengers were left waiting for long periods at bus stops as the timetable went haywire.

There were also complaints about the new route network, which had been drawn up by the government.

It took Arriva several months to get through its major teething troubles of long waiting times and bus breakdowns.

The bus company continued to suffer losses, which increased when the government ordered it to remove its articulated buses from the street after four of them had been damaged in separate fires.

Arriva finally decided to call it a day in Malta earlier this month when the service was taken over by a government-owned company which will run it until a new contractor is found.

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