The Arriva experiment is no more. It ended ignominously, all the more so given the fanfare and hype with which it was announced, devised and implemented.

It was ill-starred from the start. At first it was fair to say that all projects, especially complicated ones, have teething troubles. That benefit of the doubt was extended to Arriva to a certain extent.

It could not be total. The project was flawed from its conception. Stuffing the transport fleet with bendy buses rejected elsewhere, especially in London, made Malta the laughing stock of Britain. Worse than that, those buses soon proved they were not suited to Malta’s roads. Accidents piled up, with the other buses too.

The insurers must have had a nightmare. It was also noted from early on that the network of starts and pick-ups was not well designed. Large outlays on it were money down the drain. The fracas was bad far beyond what it takes for drivers to get used to their routes. Good timekeeping, so heartily promised, proved zilch. The system worked well in Gozo, but not in Malta.

On its part the Arriva company began making losses beyond what one expects a new venture to tot up in its early phase. While the system was intended to end public subsidies to the individual owners of the old network, Arriva too required subsidies. These even had to be increased as time went by.

The new Labour government inherited a nightmare of a system. For months it negotiated behind the scenes to try to bring sense into a senseless situation. Two points proved to be sticky. The government wanted the company to scrap the bendy buses. The company, which had been given permission to include them by the previous government, did not agree.

Also, the government wanted to revise the route system. The company requested an increase in subsidies. No agreement was reached on the quantum. It was mutually agreed that Arriva would exit from the scene, under a formula whereby it transferred its assets, excluding the bendy buses horrors, and part of its liabilities to a state company to be set up for the temporary purpose of transiting to new private ownership of the public transport system.

The arrangement was seen to be a preferred alternative to Arriva going into messy liquidation. I have a feeling that was the shareholders’ main bargaining chip once they had decided to cut their losses and shake the dust of the Maltese islands off their sandals.

Yesterday saw a new dawn. I am uncertain what it will bring. The buses will run under the combined guidance of ex-Arriva and Transport Malta officials. The government will issue a fresh call of expression of interest.

Frankly, the scenario looks bleak, whatever Plan B the government may have in mind. I doubt that there will be any foreign firm interested in taking over the new company. Arriva was owned by a top German company. The fact that it sunk under that ownership offers little attraction to the other foreign operators.

There might be an expression of interest by a local consortium. But the subsidy the consortium will demand will be hefty. There are also unknowns in the equation as apparent at the time of writing. Arriva has said that since it started operating it made a loss of some €50 million. The largest chunk of that was made in recent months.

But the company has not revealed, to my knowledge, the basis of its calculation. The public does not know what went into that loss, how much was depreciation, how much was revenue not covering operating costs, and how much exactly was the subsidy required to finance the gap before depreciation.

Anyone interested in investing money and hope in a revived venture will be asking those questions and a thousand more. Staffing levels will be discussed.

The government and the Opposition seem to be competing to raise expectations in that regard, rather than to set a backdrop of realism which allows for time to see how all costs can be kept to a minimum.

The level of fares will also need revising, and not simply because the anomaly of non-residents paying higher fares than residents will be removed under EU edict.

It remains to be seen how much loss will be run up in the six months during which the government expects to be operating the new company in an inevitable holding exercise, and whether that loss can be factored into any agreement with new private investors in the public transport system.

The government seems to have done its best so far to handle the terrible mess it inherited from the outgoing administration. The Opposition is not acknowledging that, nor has it been coming up with any helpful positive proposals.

The Arriva drama is over in name. In terms of fact it has only just started.