Arriva – one year on

Austin Gatt's courageous political decision to quash the old monopoly is starting to pay off.

And yet, it's just a pity his ministry's top-down 'I-know-it-all' approach to reform, coupled with a lack of accountability for initial mistakes, risked undermining a positive reform.

I have used the bus service on nearly every working day for the past year.  My experience has been largely positive for the following reasons.

1.     The €6.50 week-tickets makes the service cheaper for anyone who used the previous service more than three times a day on a five day basis. While the cost of using the bus four times a day on a five-day basis was €9.40, now it costs €6.50 irrespectively of the number of times one uses the bus in any 7-day period. This makes the service 31% cheaper than before. In return we get air-conditioned, accessible and safer buses.

2.     Despite having their patience tested by the disastrous launch of the Arriva service last year and the difficulties posed by any radical changeover, bus drivers have been generally patient and polite. As a commuter I no longer feel I am entering the private property of the owner-driver. This is the direct consequence of a reform which turned drivers into normal employees.
Having women (and ethnic minorities) driving buses has also helped in changing the perception of the macho bus driver.

Arriva owes a lot to its bus drivers and this should be reflected in better working conditions and humane working hours. 

3.     I have actually saved time to arrive to work in the morning. Taking a bus from Msida or Valletta to San Gwann between 7am and 7:30am is as easy as waiting for less than 5 minutes on a stage and arriving to work in 10 to 20 minutes.

Initially I had a problem with going to Valletta from San Gwann, having to journey through Mrabat and Sliema to arrive to my destination in 30 to 45 minutes. This has been partly solved, as buses are now passing through a faster route but unfortunately getting to Sliema directly from San Gwann has become a bit more difficult.

It is also easier now to travel directly from B'Kara to Sliema and Rabat and from Iklin to Bugibba. I am aware that there are other areas in Malta (like parts of Marsaskala) where commuters still lament the service, but overall there has been a general improvement over the past months. 

Unfortunately, we still pay the cost of the lack of planning before the service was launched.

Firstly, the fact that congestion on our roads was not taken in consideration when planning the routes was a cardinal mistake, which resulted in the initial chaos. Coupled with the high expectations this betrayed, it gave the system a very bad name. The fact that nobody was held accountable for this mistake simply showed a sense of indifference over the suffering created commuters.

Arriva also came at a massive political cost for government. Surely any changeover is bound to cause problems. But what should have been a positive for government was allowed to become a negative.

Secondly, the idea of saving on subsidies through the introduction of the new system did not pay off.  In the end the government had to fork more money to improve the routes, raising the subsidy from €4.9 to €6.4 million.

This proves my suspicion that the long-winded panoramic routes were introduced with the idea on saving on subsidies.  The new subsidy is still marginally cheaper than that offered to the Public Transport Association. In 2008 the Maltese taxpayer paid €6.5 million in subsidies, while the amount for 2009, went up to €10 million.

The dual fare system for tourists might be essential to keep fares low, but it has been a messy tactic. Drivers have to use their judgement arbitrarily to determine who is a tourist and who is not. This is not fitting at a time where societies are becoming more and more cosmopolitan.

Finally, a lot of time is still lost because commuters still buy tickets from the bus.  This could be avoided if tickets are sold only from shops and machines set up in all main stages.

I would also have expected a greater emphasis on the night service (which could be the best antidote to the drinking and driving problem) and should not be limited to St Julian's. Extending this service to Valletta would make a lot of sense to inject a new lease of life to the capital.

Ultimately I would say that the political decision to smash the old private monopoly and award a ten-year tender to a company is starting to pay off. 

In this sense, Austin Gatt should be congratulated for having the balls to break the backbone of one of Malta's most arrogant and entrenched monopolies. It is a pity that his bullish approach to reform ended up undermining what was good in the reform in the crucial initial stages of the reform.

Winning back the trust of the people will not be easy.