The 'taghna lkoll' buses

The Labour government has a golden opportunity to make public transport a worthwhile option for the general public.

If it manages to retain the positive aspects of the botched Arriva experiment namely; the environmentally friendly and accessible buses and the affordable ticketing system based on day and week tickets and combine this with a punctual and reliable service, it would have achieved a goal which has eluded all past governments.

Most importantly this would be a national achievement, which deserves the constructive contribution of all stakeholders. The Nationalist opposition should resist the temptation to shoot down the reform or to yearn for its failure simply because it now carries a Labour signature.

Surely it is an uphill struggle for various reasons.

The sudden departure of Arriva leaves the newly set up state owned company in dire straits.  Not only has the company inherited a portion of Arriva's debts but it will also have to pay private operators who supply coaches, which have substituted the bendy buses.  Malta is also lumped with coaches which are neither accessible for the disabled and which do not match Euro 5 standards.

Moreover the government will have to fund the new company at a rate, which is well above what was allocated for public transport in the budget.

But the greatest obstacle for any reform including the present one is the anti bus prejudice which runs deep in the Maltese psyche. 

Single drivers stuck in traffic behind a bus carrying 40 passengers are likely to blame it for the congestion problems, failing to realise that they are the main problem.

While Arriva was the fair target of criticism due to its failure to live up to expectations with regards to punctuality and reliability, it also attracted the criticism of people who never set foot on a bus and resent the presence of buses on the road.  For although the service was seriously deficient on various grounds, it was not as bad as many made it to be.  It seems that for a variety of partisan, commercial and cultural factors, some were determined to see the system fail.

This "my way or the highway mentality" may well return to haunt the present administration if it makes a serious attempt to reform the sector.

Surely Arriva could have done a much better job by allocating different size buses to different routes and times. 

A greater number of differently sized buses should be one of the cornerstones of the next transport reform.  A combination of minibuses catering for night routes, small buses catering for routes within residential streets and larger buses covering longer distances would be an ideal one.

But an increase in the number of buses will also require more subsidies and investment in this sector.  Money does not drop from the sky and tax payers must understand the need for higher funding for public transport.  The greatest mistake made by Austin Gatt was that of trying to reduce subsidies while trying to improve the service.  The end result of this was long-winded routes serviced by a limited number of buses. A collateral of this was unsatisfactory working conditions for bus drivers. For while Arriva must be credited for an upgrade in the service offered by transport workers especially in its initial days, bad working conditions coupled by uncertainty were eroding this positive aspect of the reform with drivers becoming more grumpy as time passed.

Yet even if Arriva had enough buses and the funding required to service shorter routes, the system would still have faced difficulties operating in rush hours.

In fact in those well serviced central routes which I frequented, the service worked very well except in the 8:00 am-10:00 am and 4:00pm to 6:00 pm rush hours.

This brings us to that other big shortcoming of Austin Gatt's reform.  This was the failure to address congestion before tackling the bus problem.  But any efforts to reduce congestion must necessarily give priority to public and collective modes of transport over private car use.  Policies encouraging the creation of more car parks may well encourage more cars on our roads.

An alternative bus friendly policy will entail more bus lanes and policies and fiscal tools which encourage car-pooling and discourage people who travel to work alone in their car.

One question posed by the arriva debacle is whether a vital social service like public transport should be privatised or kept in the hands of government, which has to ultimately fork out the subsidies. It remains doubtful whether public transport can ever be a profit making activity. Still one may argue that the social needs may still be achieved by subsidising the service while relying on private sector efficiency (even if this aspect seems to be over valued judging by the performance of Arriva and other private transport operators in other countries).

At this juncture, it would make sense to weigh the two options or to explore the possibility of a private public partnership. What is sure is that any private sector involvement must be transparent and contracts should always be awarded through a full tendering procedure and not sheer calls of expression of interest which may leave government too much of a leeway in favouring vested interests. 

One positive decision taken by the new government is to eliminate the discriminatory tariff system which penalised tourists and non-residents. But this should not come at the cost of increases to the present affordable tariffs which favour regular use of the service through week tickets.  This is one more argument why we should regard public transport as being first and foremost a public service and not a profit making business.