Numbers only mean something when put in context
The way people go on, you’d think they were really happy with that situation and want it back again.
timeasofmalta.com, the evening before last:
Arriva involved in 1,619 accidents
Arriva buses have been involved in 1,619 traffic accidents since the service was introduced in July last year, Transport Minister Austin Gatt said in reply to a parliamentary question this evening.
Aside from the fact that questions like these are not the stuff of parliamentary business and should be more properly put to the bus company, let’s take a look at the numbers, shall we?
The way figures are just chucked about meaninglessly as propaganda (and by this, I mean the Opposition) is offensive. We’re not all Labour voters here, for heaven’s sake. Some of us can actually see the bigger picture.
Here are some additional figures non-Labour-voters might find useful. Over the period under review for traffic accidents, the buses made more than ONE MILLION TRIPS.
That’s right. One million. Or, more precisely, 1,045,819 trips.
During those one million+ trips, they had 1,619 “traffic accidents”, a figure which includes even a mere scratch on a bumper.
What we are talking about here, dear readers, is actually the rather low accident figure of 1.5 traffic accidents per 1,000 trips.
This is the equivalent, in domestic terms, of using your car twice a day, every single day, over the course of 16 months and having, say, a bumper-to-bumper in a queue of traffic, just the once. Or grazing the car in front of you as you come out of a parking-bay.
And that’s a small car which you own yourself, and not a ruddy great bus for which, unlike the buses of the past, you feel no pride of ownership and so are less inclined to be careful with.
Next up: “expensive clothes”.
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I sometimes wonder whether the anti Arriva campaign in The Times, which started when the tender was first granted, is due to commercial reasons.
As a foreigner I tell you it’s because they are not Maltese.
If that bloke run down for calling someone gay had been Maltese not an Aussie, the sentence would not have been so light.
Foreigners are easy targets, have no connections, won’t leave a bomb at your door, and don’t have relatives to get revenge of any sort.
Spot on, ‘Bystander’. Actually, it is unbelievable how much, many Maltese people detest foreigners and by foreigners I mean all sorts: from European to Africans and all the other continents.
If I am not mistaken, Arriva’s Maltese partners are Tumas Group and their insurers are Allcare. With Labour in government I’m sure there’ll be a change of tune.
As a native, I tell you it’s because it was introduced by a PN government.
Yes I think you are right. Quite frankly I am quite sick and tired of the anti-Arriva brigade and the Times sure is giving them a helping hand as they report every single mishap happening on Arriva buses as if accidents, etc. never happened with the previous bus service. I have been a commuter for 40 years, never having owned a car, and I feel that I am in a good position to assess the present new bus system. Whilst I feel there are still some problems to be addressed I think it is a great improvement over the previous bus ‘service’. Every time I try to reason with the numerous anti-Arriva brigade who lose no opportunity to denigrate the company and its service, I am labelled as a PN apologist and a blue-eye blinker person or an employee of Arriva. I am almost sure that this barrage against Arriva is not only for commercial reasons, but the envy and lanzit of some of the previous bus owners who still think this territory is theirs despite having been given good compensation for their buses. The service started badly because of well known reasons and the PL definitely gave them a helping hand as one can gauge from the type of comments in the Times. PL gave them go ahead to berate the system and its supporters got the buzzword by moaning about the system. Now the PL has jumped on the band wagon because a British MP joked about the bendy buses. I could go on and on but do not wish to take up more space.
Daphne: What you should have done is to compare like with like, namely, the number of accidents Arriva buses have had compared to the number of accidents the former buses have had for an equivalent amount of time, And an equivalent number of trips.How about that ?
But please remember, the Arriva buses are supposed to be new buses, while the former ones had been running for many years !
[Daphne – The old buses had so many accidents that no company would insure them. Or have you forgotten that?]
Does Labour’s electoral promise for the removal of the bendy buses fall under the category of “indhil barrani”?
No way – Labour has already declared that the bendy buses will be withdrawn only from certain routes.
Can’t imagine the Marsascala / Zabbar / Fgura route without the bendy buses and naturally the St Julians / Sliema area.
Not to mention the Cirkewwa route.
Even better context would be to provide the accident rate of the old bus system.
There is only one problem with Arriva. The data required to actually plan a successful implementation of a new bus system and routes never existed.
Half of Transport Malta does not have the resources to collect such information.
Maybe money spent in useless projects could have easily helped build the invisible infrastructure so duly required for a ‘modern’ state.
But I do not think that a parliament constituting mainly of lawyers could actually understand this.
Arriva have really handled the situation extremely well. Now whether the bendy buses are right or not is another story.
It’s in the operator’s interest to collect the data and finetune the system. The information will point at the congestion as being the primary source of its glitches.
A more interesting, and possibly realistic, perspective would be to consider the kilometres covered, rather than the number of trips.
Arriva is such a huge improvement on the previous bus service providers. It is by far more disciplined, much cleaner and comfortable, and much more efficient and safe.
The travel options and routes have increased to such an extent that one can take a single direct bus to the airport from any locality in Malta and Gozo at a very low cost. So many new routes linking erstwhile non connected localities (e.g. Zabbar and St Julian’s to mention one) have been introduced and are proving to be very popular with patrons.
I use the bus service frequently and can vouch for the dramatic improvement. The initial teething troubles are over.
My expectation and hope is that Arriva, which is a German owned corporate subsidiary and a leading provider of transport services, will continue to enhance the service as Malta needs and deserves it.
Yes buit it doesn’t take into account the probably high level of near misses involving buses, particularly the bendy buses that have their rear very often swinging to its heart content round corners and roundabouts.
You can obviously have lots of near misses also with your car, so that is neither here nor there. Bendy buses swing their rear all over the world and it seems that it is only in Malta and the UK that people complain. There is a simple solution. Keep your distance. It works here in Stockholm and I suspect it might also work in Malta.
Given the density of traffic on Maltese roads, I’d say every normal drive is a near miss.
Actually, Gakku, it’s not people in the UK who complain at all. It’s Boris Johnson. Period.
The debendification of the routes in London has also brought with it the protests of wheelchair users, strugglers and stragglers because double-decker buses are nowhere as accessible as the articulated buses, and they can carry far less passengers – 35 less to be exact.
And had Boris bothered to look outside the window of the conference centre where he was speaking in Birmingham, he would have seen the same bendy buses he had in London. Birmingham is in fact the city where most of London’s bendy buses ended up.
I don’t usually like hurling insults, imma kemm int tuba mandango70.
There is indeed an anti-Arriva campaign on The Times.
I use the buses every day. I wouldn’t be caught dead using my car Mon-Fri to go to Valletta and back. I have to say the service is extremely better, much more punctual, the drivers much more courteous and the buses much more comfortable.
Yes, there are routes which need to be more reliable and sometimes, the bus does not turn up at all and yes that is, frankly, unacceptable.
However, the way some people grumble makes you actually think that they were madly happy with the previous bus system. Of course they weren’t. And I point this out when I’m frustrated to the pointing of not controlling my demeanour any longer, frustrated, of course, by the continuous grumbling of my fellow passengers. And I do ask them: but don’t you see that the system HAS improved? The hours are longer, we can go anywhere, the buses are a.c’ed and so on and so forth. As is wont of people who have nothing in their brains but sawdust, they reply to my questions by regaling me with their blank stares.
They are determined to foul-mouth the new bus system and even if the buses were gold-plated, had chocolate fountains rather than ticket-dispensing machnes and had chirping birds flying about to relax the stressed commuters and were driven by Daniel Craig or Angela Jolie (in accordance with one’s sexual preference and orientation) they would still foul-mouth it. So, I just give up. I happily catch my bus everyday and leave these people to happily wallow in their misery. After all, they are not interesting in enjoying life. Really. Most of them are miserable Dementors.
That would be Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.
The system requires priority lanes given the network and transfer junctions. Every bus stuck in traffic is another one left waiting to leave. Are we willing to subscibe to this?
Daphne, even when taken in context you must admit that there has been too many accidents involving the Arriva buses. In my opinion there are a few reasons:
A) Most of the bus drivers are new to the job – probably never driven anything of the size before
B) A number of the bus drivers are women – Just joking
C) These buses are larger than the ones we had before, there are many more of them and they are making more trips.
D) As you said they are owned by Arriva not the bus drivers themselves so the drivers are less careful
I assume that as time passes these numbers will fall and no i would never want to go back to the previous state of affairs although unfortunately some of the arriva bus drivers are inheriting their predecessors’ bad habits like staying in the middle of the road instead of in the bus bay and barging around like idiots.
Such an apt heading for Franco’s Form IIC results.