The light green is similar to the colour that characterised the bus service between 1973 and 1995. Photo: Malta 01 bus by -jkb-

Buses will sport a light green and white livery when the new operator takes over in January, making this the fourth colour change in four decades.

The new colours will eventually replace the technicolour fleet that has characterised the public transport service over the past year since the departure of Anglo-German company Arriva.

Although the majority of the current fleet is aquamarine, the colour of Arriva, a number of route buses supplied by private operators came in various colours, shapes and sizes.

Spanish company Autobuses de Leon will take over the bus service on January 8 and will eventually add 142 new buses to the fleet, phasing out the contracted private coaches.

The light green colour is a flashback to the green colour that characterised the bus service between 1973 and 1995 when it was replaced with yellow and orange.

The stamp shows the colour of the Cottonera route bus pre-1973.

But veteran commuters from the Cottonera area would also recall that light green was the colour for buses running to their locality in the pre-1973 era.

Until 1973 the bus service was a rainbow of colours that had been in place since the 1930s, when routes were colour-coded according to locality. It was in 1973 that route buses adopted, for the first time, a uniform colour, green, which was replaced in 1995 when the service was revamped.

The yellow and orange of the mid-1990s eventually made way for Arriva’s aquamarine in 2011 when it started operating its short-lived bus service.

kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com