The Arriva saga is drawing to its messy end. Arriva has pulled out of its contractual obligations contract, with Transport Malta assuming control of the public transport system through a temporary entity until a new operator is found following a call for tenders.

Although at the time of writing, actual details of the handover have still not been made public, the Arriva saga is certainly over.

It has been a saga replete with pitfalls and bad decisions based on wrong assumptions from they very start. The pity is that the principle behind the public transport reform launched two-and-a-half years ago is sound and makes sense. The ‘old’ bus owners and drivers used to believe they could run the show on their own terms and bully the government of the day. As a result, we had public transport system designed for the ‘convenience’ of the bus owners rather than according to the needs of the public.

With so many negatives in the public transport system that existed before July 2011, it was quite natural – but deceptively beguiling – for anyone to think that designing a better system to replace the old one would be a piece of cake.

The pitfalls into which the creators of the new system stumbled were too many, and the new system never took off and functioned properly – except in Gozo, where the previous system was less reliable. Undoubtedly, there was also a need for several changes in the bus routes. Using Valletta as the only hub in the system was wasteful and unnecessary.

The first serious pitfall was the result of the decision to have one date for the change of the operator and the change of the bus routes. This was compounded by three subplots: the lack of information that the public was given about the new routes; the takeover being launched at the same time when people move to their summer residences when the old bus trip schedule was normally adjusting because of this occurrence; and the incredible confusion that some 60 ‘drivers’ caused when on the first day of the service they pulled out of a job they had accepted only to be able to pull the carpet from under the new operator – a ploy of some who resented their being replaced by Arriva.

While the drivers’ ploy was unexpected, the other two factors reflect a lack of a proper assessment of the system. In any case, the new bus service started on the wrong foot and it never fully recovered.

The changes that had to be made to the routes that had been dictated by the ‘experts’ of the responsible ministry led to Arriva asking for more subsidies, as they were ordered changes outside the remit of their contract.

Arriva started to lose too much money to survive the initial setbacks, and something had to give. There is a limit to how much money a company – even an international one – can lose, and the threatened dissolution of the local Arriva company could not but be considered seriously.

Then there was the bendy buses subplot. Even though these vehicles had the advantage of moving a large number of passengers, they were not suitable for many Maltese roads and their spontaneously – or not-so-spontaneously – catching fire made matters worse.

Arriva’s departure is no surprise. An April fool’s joke, falsely reporting that the old buses and drivers were to return, was one of the 10 most read stories on times ofmalta.com last year, according to a report published last Tuesday. This claim was, perhaps, reinforced by a rumour among diehard PN supporters that Joseph Muscat’s secret pre-electoral promises included one to this effect made to the old bus owner-drivers.

A rise in the cost of bus fares is on the cards

Ignoring the fact that this idea is practically impossible, the government is doing no such thing. Its declared intentions confirm that the policy that led to Arriva being awarded the contract for the running of the public transport system is here to stay and that there will never be a return to the old system when owner-drivers felt they had a ‘safe and permanent’ monopoly and believed that they could run the show on their own terms.

Ridding the country of that particular yoke was not easy, as some young ministerial aide might have thought. It cost the taxpayer a lot of money and the PN a lot of votes.

One hopes that the present management of Transport Malta and the responsible ministry understand fully the lesson of what has happened in the past. The conditions in the new call for bids should be considered carefully in the light of the Arriva experience: the miscalculations and pitfalls encountered in that experience should be avoided at all costs. Rushing the tender unnecessarily will not help.

The new entity running the bus service temporarily will probably lose money, even though it is being spared the cost of the initial capital to buy buses. The eventual contractor will probably ask for more subsidies than Arriva had accepted in the first place.

A rise in the cost of bus fares is on the cards.

micfal@maltanet.net