Get on the bus

Will we ever get the public transport system right? Three years after the doomed Arriva experiment we are now back where we started, facing the takeover of the buses by another foreign company (only this time it’s a Spanish firm, Autobuses Urbanos de Leon (ALESA), which should make things even more interesting).

It was an expensive experiment which left a wake of bendy buses wedged in narrow streets or going up in flames and commuters fuming over newfangled routes which took them half way across the island to get to a destination only a few miles away.  I only rode the bus sporadically during the Arriva days and I had no cause to complain because I happen to live in a main road which is well-served – but others who used the bus daily understandably voiced their objections when their bus simply did not turn up or when they found they had to now leave home an hour earlier to allow for the new, longer, winding circular routes.

And shall we recall the nightmare of those first few days when all the numbers and routes were changed without a well thought out marketing campaign to prepare commuters, many of whom were not Internet savvy and could not be expected to figure our their daily commute online?

I don’t agree that Arriva was “chased” out of Malta; it didn’t flop because Maltese commuters had anything against the company simply because it was foreign or because it was put in place by a PN government

In some villages, people woke up to find that their faithful, familiar bus route was simply wiped off the map because it was not financially viable. A wildcat strike on the first day of operations contributed to the chaos; drivers claimed their hours of work had been changed so they did not show up for work and were subsequently fired. British bus drivers with no knowledge of our roads had to be quickly brought in to replace them. Fun times.

The whole thing was one big PR disaster and from an observer’s point of view it seemed that Arriva and the PN government at the time had shaken hands on the deal simply because it was the one which would take over Malta’s transport system for the cheapest price possible.

Well, frankly, it showed. The contract with Arriva stipulated that they could not increase fares and the government subsidy was capped at €10 million yearly. The shortfall had to come from somewhere so enter the notorious, completely impractical, bendy buses which would (theoretically) reduce the amount of routes and buses needed because they could carry twice as many passengers even though that meant spending half a day on an unwanted tour of the island when all you wanted to do was get to work. It also meant cutting out several very much in demand routes.

Not only did people not use the buses more, the transport mess was forcing commuters who had been using the bus regularly to go back to using their cars.

Not only did people not use the buses more, the transport mess was forcing commuters who had been using the bus regularly to go back to using their cars. Following the vociferous public reaction, the company went back to the drawing board and agreed to bring back some of the old routes while everyone pointed fingers at whose fault it was.

After one too many buses had burst into flames in what seemed like spontaneous combustion, the plug was pulled on the bendy buses which had become a national joke seemingly played on us by Boris Johnson who had gleefully proclaimed how he had got rid of them from London’s streets when they were sold to Malta. But, without the bendy buses which used to carry so many passengers, the envisaged public transport model had no chance of survival. Finally, and perhaps inevitably, Arriva pulled out because they were incurring such huge losses.

It must be galling for the former Arriva bosses to now read the new contract purportedly hammered out with ALESA: they are going to be allowed to raise the bus fares and their annual subsidy will be between €24 million and €29 million. Could this government have saved the day by renegotiating the contract with Arriva to give them these more favorable conditions, rather than putting us through yet another public transport upheaval? Yes, maybe, but that would have meant changing absolutely everything which had been agreed upon because nothing about the Arriva contract made any sense.

Contrary to what some people say, I don’t agree that Arriva was “chased” out of Malta; it didn’t flop because Maltese commuters had anything against the company simply because it was foreign or because it was put in place by a PN government. That’s just silly conjecture; if it had worked efficiently we would have embraced it. It flopped because the whole system was ill-thought out, badly planned and seemingly done without any consultation whatsoever with the end user, the Maltese public itself.

And if ALESA intends to do something similar it can save itself a lot of trouble and expense and just stay in Spain. They really have to familiarize themselves with what commuters want and need, and not impose their version of what they think Malta needs.  This country is the size of a town which can be reached from one end to the other in one hour but is still bursting at the seams with cars because our transport system, to put it bluntly, sucks. The thought of relying on a bus to get anywhere remotely on time is, for most people, as preposterous as asking them to walk everywhere.

Yet the snarling traffic and gridlock caused by rows and rows of cars with just the driver and no passengers going to and from work is a hellish reality. Parents are already breaking out into a sweat at the mere thought of schools starting again in a few weeks’ time, bringing with them the dreaded school runs.

And last but not least, there is the biggest bone of contention – the bus drivers themselves. Now, maybe I have been lucky but in the few times I have used the bus since it fell back into the government’s hands, I have not witnessed the kind of boorish, ill-mannered behaviour which has hit the news recently. I have, however, witnessed a lot of reckless driving; on one bus I was convinced someone was going to be thrown through the windshield because the driver’s sudden and constant application of the brakes had those of us who were standing muttering a steady stream of “sorry. excuse me” every time we were hurled against each other.

We also seem to be back to the old, all too familiar “relatives and friends casually standing and chatting next to the driver” kind of behaviour.  The shoddy non-uniform has also made its depressing re-appearance. That kind of thing has to go, because if there was one thing which Arriva did do right was to instill a certain professionalism in their drivers who were always smartly turned out, polite and courteous.  So the sooner the drivers are reined in once again under serious management, the better.

It remains to be seen whether the ALESA takeover of our transport system will finally sort out this issue once and for all, dragging Malta into the much-needed culture of using public transport. We must, we have to get it right this time, before the whole island is locked into a standstill of tail to tail traffic which cannot budge because there simply is no more space to manoeuvre the estimated 315,000 registered cars on our roads.