Dear Austin... I am livid

Dear Austin,

Unlike many other commentators who found nothing positive to write about the public transport reform, I immediately welcomed the fact that the new bus fleet was not only air-conditioned but was environmentally friendly due to its Euro 5 engines.

I also congratulated you on your guts in taking on Malta's most entrenched and rabid monopolies which regaled us with a paleolithic and unsafe bus fleet, and to have set environmental conditions on the new operators.

Surely, like other citizens I also expressed my disappointment at the way the new routes were formulated even if I was not personally negatively affected, having seen an improvement in the routes I use on a daily basis.

I also expressed my hunch that this was the result of your attempt to square the circle. Surely the old subsidy system was based on a stupid formula compensating bus drivers for losses, thus promoting sloth and inefficiency. But I still doubted how you could improve standards, keep tariffs very cheap, increase the duration of the service to 11 o'clock in all localities while still reducing subsidies.

Since the days of the Halcrow report, the focus has been on reducing the size of the bus fleet rather than complementing the old routes with new ones. It is true that the former bus fleet was inefficiently used on a day-off, day-on basis. But it was always unclear whether the brief given to consultants was that of improving the service or cutting subsidies. I suspect that the brief given to consultants was a bit of both.

The end result was that we had a high quality public transport service which failed to meet the needs of a number of local communities who ended up wasting more of their time in quasi-panoramic routes, or waiting on stages as the available buses were full up.

What is clear is that the original Arriva fleet of 266 buses was not enough to cater for Malta. Now we will get 36 more, but these will be of an inferior quality. Surely anything is better than the old bus fleet which was beyond any Euro classification, but don't we deserve the best? I am tired of living in a country where the first thing to be sacrificed on the altar of political convenience is environmental standards when we all know that public transport is the key to any improvement in our air quality.

I just hope that the government and Arriva will respect the May 2012 deadline to ensure once again that all the bus fleet will be Euro 5 compliant. Let's hope that this will not be another saga like that of the Marsa power station whose closure remains elusive despite promises made since 1987.

It would have been better for the government to shoulder the extra expense in getting decent Euro 5 buses now. The waiving of standards so soon in the day makes me uneasy as it brings bad memories of half baked reforms in the transport sector, which saw the arrival to Malta of a new set of buses discarded from the rest of Europe.

As long as I am forced to ride on one of the 36 new old buses, I will feel cheated. I was offended whenever I heard people saying that the old system was better. Such reasoning reflects that of a society which is all too willing to settle for mediocrity. I always suspected that many Maltese have a masochistic trait and felt at home in the old trash we had on our roads.

Instead of asking for the very best many gave the impression that they would settle for mediocrity. I disagree. We live in an advanced European nation and we should demand the very best.

Austin I think you owe us this much. I do not give a fig about the the antics of the drama queens in your party. In this case political responsibility means ensuring that people are given what they were promised even at the cost of losing face.

Your resignation would probably make things worse, not better for us commuters, as it would mean a ministerial changeover right in the middle of a prolonged reform. Unfortunately your latest decision to sacrifice quality to make up for the route fuck-up makes your position on the eve of the vote untenable.

Yours truly,

James Debono