Before the March 2013 general election, the Labour Party gave a strong impression that it had a plan B to every contingency that might arise. It most certainly did not have one for public transport after Arriva packed up well ahead of the expiry of its contract. If the new bus company the government is negotiating with starts running the service in January, as the transport minister has now said, it would have taken the government a whole year to find a new bus operator.
Negotiating a new contract is not a light matter but then the party in government ought to have been more prudent when it criticised the previous administration over public transport.
Acting in the same way as the previous administration in relation to Arriva, the minister says he is confident the new service will meet people’s expectations. That will only be seen when the service is launched.
Up to now, the public knows very little about the kind of negotiations the government has been having over the past two months with the preferred bidder, the Spanish company Autobuses de Leon, apart from the fact that the subsidy is expected to be raised from €10 million to a much higher figure. However, part of the cost is to be covered by a rise in fares.
The minister has gone on record saying the new bus fares will be affordable. That, too, remains to be seen. However, will the new service be affordable to the government? This is an important point as a heavier subsidy would raise costs for the government, a matter just raised by credit rating agency Fitch.
When Fitch drew attention to the fact that fiscal figures on a cash-basis for January-July indicated expenditure slippages, it mentioned three areas in which this is happening: healthcare, social security and transport. True, the annual public transport cost to the government will be nowhere near the bills for healthcare and social security but it would nonetheless represent another burden.
The credit rating agency does not expect these developments to compromise deficit reduction this year but warns that “continued slippages in public expenditure could pose a risk to public debt reduction should revenues underperform in the future”.
The minister is insisting that the current running costs are lower than they were with Arriva. He has also said that the new company’s offer is much better than the bid that was made by the Maltese consortium.
Details of the deal are expected to be announced within a fortnight. However, whatever arrangement is arrived at with the Spanish company, it goes without saying that the service would have to be affordable to both the government and the commuter.
Above all, the service would have to truly meet people’s expectations in terms of punctuality and, equally important, the routes that wil be covered in the new schedules.
A recent Brussels report indicated that the Maltese people were the least satisfied when it comes to reliability, punctuality and frequency of service. However, these findings were contradicted by figures that were released by Transport Malta and which indicated a high level of efficiency.
People have now waited long enough for an efficient route bus service that meets their daily needs. If, finally, the service gets better, the probability is that more and more people will be encouraged to start making use of it rather than continuing to go through the hassle driving through heavily-congested roads as at present.