Last year, Dr Clyde Caruana announced while reading the Budget 2022 that public transport will become free to all Maltese residents as of next October, “making us the second country within the EU to have free public transport”. This is seen by many to be a big step towards growing the use of public transport and reducing the number of cars on the road, which are year-by-year chocking our ever-widening roads.

The issues with the service are countless. Buses that leave too early, buses that show up extremely late, those that never come at all, or end up not stopping because they’re completely full up, buses going in the same area making their trips at the exact same time, not to mention the rolled out ‘tallinja’ app that rarely shows the correct time for when a bus is passing by.

It is almost definite that when people who have not had to rely on public transport before will encounter these issues almost every time they attempt to ride the bus, and they will be glad to return to calling for a taxi or paying their car insurance.

This observation isn’t coming from an oracle, a data scientist, or a politician. I am just someone who has been using nothing but the bus to get anywhere for the last 6 years. Just in case there are people reading this that don’t know what it’s like or have never dared to try the bus after the English company ‘Arriva’ made a mess, here’s the general process.

Before going anywhere new, one must make sure to check all possible routes and time schedules that could be able to take you to where you wish to go.

For example;

To get from Qrendi to, say, Golden Bay, you have to grab either Route 72, which comes every half hour if you’re lucky, or the 74, which comes by every hour on paper only, in order to get to the capital.

If you managed to board the bus and arrive at Valletta, which takes around 30-40 minutes depending on the traffic, you better hope that the only bus that goes to Golden Bay, Route 44, didn’t leave, as you’d have to wait for a full hour before the next one comes (if it does).

After a bit over an hour on this bus, you finally arrive at Golden Bay, bringing the grand total of travel time, including only waiting for the bus at Valletta, to 2 hours.

And 2 hours is assuming that there was no waiting time at the start and both buses arrived exactly on time. On the other hand, the same route by car would take around 35/40 minutes.

To circle back to the minister’s speech, Malta will be the “second country within the EU to have free public transport.” In case you’re wondering, the other country is Luxembourg, the other microstate in Europe.

Last summer I visited the Grand Duchy, and during my stay, I had never required the use of a taxi at any point. I rode the trains, trams, and buses for free throughout the entire country. However, their system is *slightly* more efficient than Malta’s. Even in remote areas, the maximum amount of time that I had to wait for a bus was 10 minutes. Yes, 10 minutes. I never had to check when the bus was arriving to plan when to start waiting for it at the bus stop. I simply went to wait, and the required bus arrived within a few minutes.

Just because we make things ‘free’ does not mean that their issues are solved. Most people who know how bad public transport is would agree that it would be preferred if the service is not free, but has an efficient and serious schedule, rather than having to wait in the rain or blistering sun for a free bus ride that never comes.

It is my hope that the government takes these issues into account and begins works to revamp the never improving and archaic bus routes and schedules, in tandem with this new scheme to get more locals to use public transport. It is only through this proper planning that the people who plan on riding the buses for the first time next October will continue to use them in the long run.

Free public transport will not make more people use it regularly. Efficiency will.

N.B.: This article was completely written on a bus stuck in traffic, as the free onboard Wi-Fi was, as almost always, not working.