The general consensus on the buses: that a bad service in smelly and dirty conditions run by Maltese people that costs the taxpayer Eur26 million a year is preferable to a better service in clean and efficient conditions run by BARRANIN U INGLIZI who pick up the bill themselves
Times of Malta journalist Kristina Chetcuti took a series of bus trips and interviewed passengers to see whether they’re happier now than they were before.
She found that despite the “faint-inducing” stink of sweat, the filth and the general mess and inefficiency, passengers were defiantly defensive because they had got rid of dawk l-Inglizi.
There is no need to complain any more, a commuter tells me. Even though the bus system is not good, it’s okay. Sweat trickled down the 60-year-old man’s brow and he fanned himself with Bargain magazine; as he sits in the crowded bus, he says: “At least we got rid of l-Ingliżi.”
He is referring to the German company Arriva – which used to be British – that took over in 2011 and packed up last January.
“At least now things are “tagħna f’tagħna” (in our own hands).”
Most commuters seem to be satisfied enough that the battle of ‘us and them’ has been won and are happy to mute their complaints. Three years on, the bus system, however, still leaves much to be desired.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140707/local/Buses-what-passengers-think-3-years-down-road.526635
How sad, what ignorance pervades this island.
Kemm konna ahjar meta konna aghar.
As most commuters will state, before the fateful arrival Arriva, the bus service was better. There were more routes and bus journeys were shorter.
[Daphne – David, you have lived away from Malta for several years, so exactly how do you know that the pre-Arriva bus service was better than the service provided by Arriva? Or that people would rather have ‘more routes and shorter bus journeys’ than cleanliness, efficiency, comfort, air-conditioning, punctuality and polite drivers?]
David, comments like yours are the most patronising and insulting ones to those who, like me, have used buses almost daily all their lives.
Before Arriva, schedules were nonexistent and it was impossible to plan a trip. The number of routes was much less than today and to go from one town to another you usually had to change buses at Valletta. In most towns the service ended at 9.00pm, and in Gozo at 5.00pm and there was only one trip an hour to and from Mater Dei and the University. As for buses to the airport, the least said the better.
It was almost normal for drivers/owners to skip trips when they had other commitments, such as ferrying schoolchildren or tourists. Speaking of tourists, it used to be ‘traditional’ for them to be short-changed by the drivers, whose rough language and multilingual swearing were the soundtrack of more trips than I care to remember.
So, David, please, before making such wild claims as “most commuters will state”, do inform yourself. Know what you’re talking about.
You can ask regular commuters. Besides the deficiencies of the Arriva services and the complaints of the commuters were reported in most of the press.
[Daphne – Oh, indeed, David, they were. That’s called ‘an agenda’. Unlike you, I used both the pre-Arriva bus service and the service provided by Arriva, and you can take it from me that the latter was far superior. Are buses in your part of the world bone-shaking pieces of junk with uncomfortable seats, floors thick with dirt, violent and aggressive drivers, and a pervasive stink of body odour, that don’t run on time? No, they are not, and I know because I’ve used them.]
David do you think that the lack of medicines at the ‘pharmacy of your choice’ is any better than a few months ago? It is worse, but the Labour section of the population is now quite happy and does not grumble because they picked the government and must feel proud of their choice to safeguard their own self-respect.
Now, they don’t grumble.
Before Arriva it was quite common for certain bus drivers not to turn up for a trip just because they had something else to do, like a spot of hunting or fishing. They were shabby, rude, aggressive and did things like pretending that something was wrong with the bus and everybody had to get off – just to get out of driving a route they didn’t want to drive.
The list is endless. Did you live on another planet at that time?
As a commuter myself who used both pre-Arriva and Arriva bus services, I can assure that the Arriva bus service was much, much better. I admit the routes may not have improved that much; in some cases they became nonsensical – getting from Mosta to the University on time during weekdays was a nightmare sometimes – but those weren’t decided by Arriva itself.
However, the overall service, buses and infrastructure were better. Ticketing machines and the different tickets on offer were an improvement, as was an updated website which gave you different options to reach your destination.
There was an improved timetable and a central company which kept drivers under control and with which one could communicate and send queries to. The standard wasn’t always met, but it was there.
What happened was Labour and the media attacked the Arriva service and influenced the more gullible commuters. I’ve had the pleasure of being on pre-Arriva buses which broke down or were involved in accidents, but they didn’t make the front page of The Times of Malta. No need to guess why that is.
A three hour bus ride now takes just an hour. Obviously Arriva were better.
I have travelled on buses where one’s arm was left with a grey dirt mark just by touching the window ledge, where one had to put one’s legs on a cardboard box, a broom, a mop or navigate a bucket wedged between seats, where crumpled paper, and bottles rolled underneath the seats every time the driver braked, where exhaust fumes bellowed in the passenger area, not in the least hindered by the pieces of dirty carpeting covering strategic places next to the driver.
I have been able to watch the road go by from rust holes, wondering how anyone who allowed that could possibly be checking vital things such as the braking systems. I have been left standing on the bus stop and heard language which no service provider should ever even contemplate uttering to customers.
I have been driven by unkempt maniacs using their mobile phone with one hand and with their other hand on the wheel, wearing wifebeater vests and puffing away on cigarette after cigarette while playing the radio at top volume and refusing to answer basic requests for information.
These things did not happen on every trip but they did happen often and no amount of sarcasm can tell me that they did not because I, unlike some, do use buses regularly.
I was not happy with some Arriva bus routes BUT taking into consideration all aspects of the previous service compared to Arriva certainly causes me to find in favour of the Arriva service.
Those telling you what to think must be so grateful for the existence of cognitive dissonance.
Never let it be said that Joseph Muscat and his team don’t understand precisely what makes Gahan tick. They played their cards to perfection. As in so many situations they understand public perception and know how to manipulate it.
Sadly, the Nationalists look up to heaven and keep repeating to themselves “is-sewwa jirbah zgur”.
@ David . Arriva had no say in the routes – that part of the mess was Mr know-it-all-Manwel-Delia’s doing. Oh well you will now enjoy subsidising the bus service by up to 50 million euros per annum. Malta’s new drydocks. But perhaps even that’s OK for morons like you.
“At least now things are “tagħna f’tagħna” (in our own hands).”
I would have asked him wether he was also happy with the BWSC Delimara Power station being under Communist China’s control.
Daqt l-Indifest, l-ahwa. Ejja nuruhom ‘il dal-Inglizi.
As someone who always uses the buses when in Malta I will say this: Arriva were the best thing to happen to the Maltese transport. Yes, there were a few teething problems, but all in all they were great. For the first time we had night buses, and more direct buses to the airport and Sliema/St Julian’s area.
When Arriva had first arrived I spent the first day of my Christmas holidays in Valletta. I didn’t wait too long at all for the bus to take me there in the morning and was wondering what all the fuss was about.
Then, while in Valletta, I walked around the new bus terminus trying to find a bus to Lija. I asked one of the people in uniform if he could help me. At first he pretended not to hear me, but then reluctantly pointed at one of the bays.
I walked over and saw that the next bus left in 45 minutes. “Ah”, I thought,” This must be what people are talking about”. But then I wandered over to the bay next to it and saw another two routes that pretty much passed the same way. I looked and saw that one of them was about to leave and hopped on.
I could have spent 45 minutes waiting for a bus to arrive, but didn’t need to because there was another one just about to leave. Why didn’t the person I asked tell me that?
Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he wasn’t sure. However, I believe that the reason why Arriva had so many problems was not because of the company, but because the people it employed wanted to deliberately cause problems and delays just to annoy customers.
In what seemed to me unofficial industrial action, bus drivers and other employees misled customers, lied to them outright in some cases, just to create problems.
If these people really are annoyed about having foreigners run the show, they certainly aren’t consistent in their views. We now have China running our electricity. They probably won’t care much about that though, because their dear leader made that happen.
One needs to point out that Arriva employees belonged to the GWU and did not turn up en masse after the first day, after months of expensive training.
There was no way for Arriva to operate successfully since it was sabotaged from day one.
This did not only occur because a significant number of its employees did not turn up for their first day of work, but also due to the relentless bad press in the media, including what we used to consider independent media such as The Times of Malta.
I run a serious business in a major European city, am Maltese and live overseas. I always rented a car when back on the Island to visit family or on business. Then Arriva came along and I found them efficient, clean and acceptable. They weren’t perfect, but then again, where I live on the Continent, there is a bus every five hours to the nearest town, so anything coming along every hour is tantamount to clockwork for me.
Enough of that. It appeared clear to me from the start that the low class, low rank, mass custom of the public transport service (as in every other European country) was hell-bent to make it fail. A loud and obnoxious woman who could barely breathe let alone talk sense, made it a point to complain to the driver, and demand reimbursement, for the bus being five minutes late.
The “barranin” theme was always in there somewhere, as well as “tlifna gojjell”, the illiterate way of saying that they missed the abuse of the obese and wayward drivers who used to drive cranky rusting vehicles fit for recycling, but who they identified with as standing up to “the system” (read, the Nationalist government that didn’t “belong to them”).
I haven’t used the service since Arriva left. I would have come to blows if I heard that 60 something clown quoted above speak as he did. “L-Inglizi ghamluk nies pulcinell…”, would have been the start of my reply.
I want to make a point about public transport in Malta: Please stop assuming that the system needs to make a profit. The health care system is not there to generate money, neither the education system.
Likewise, an efficient public transport system would be very good for the country and so profit is not really a big issue. Think of the millions saved in road maintenance, fuel imports and the decrease in pollution if we really had a great bus service that was a real alternative to driving privately owned cars.
But that was the philosophy behind Austin Gatt’s pet project which everyone had sworn to see flounder.
You can say and do anything, and we will accept it, but no Austin and no bendy buses please.
That’s not the point.
The point is that with Arriva we had a transport system which was working reasonably well and where further improvements were easily achievable. Subsidies were being paid but within reason.
We now have a system which is of lesser quality and which is costing the taxpayer double what it cost before.
Poorer public transport means that more people will choose not to use it which in turn means more traffic, more congestion and more pollution.
So why is it wrong to have a British/German company run Malta’s bus service but it is perfectly fine to have China’s communist dictatorship OWN our power supply?
Because the British and Germans are White, but the Chinese are not.
That, my friends, is what it boils down to. Malta and its Third Worldism.
To be consistent with their beliefs, those who say that getting rid of the “foreigner-owned” Arriva was a good thing “ghax issa taghna f’taghna” should be demanding that all foreign-owned companies (investiment barrani) should leave our shores and leave everything in Maltese hands.
But that would make us even worse than Third World countries and we might have to resort to open, rusty and leaking boats to seek a better life elsewhere.
“There is no need to complain any more” said that idiot.
Yes, there certainly is, and for a lot of reasons – if you don’t want to be treated like an animal by the new breed of ‘public transport’ drivers.
The problem, however, is ‘to whom can one complain?’
The other day, on alighting from a bus at Fond Ghadir, I told the driver that the route 12 and route 13 service is still very poorly served. Crowds of tourists are still seen at Sliema and St Julian’s bus-stops waiting in the hot sun for a bus with still a few standing passengers to be somehow squeezed in.
The reply was in three stages:-
There are not enough buses. Go and complain to Transport Malta. It was Austin Gatt who brought this mess about.
On August 15, 2011, I was stuck in Qrendi about 8.00 pm. with about seven others waiting for the bus back to Valletta.
I phoned the Arriva offices asking why no scheduled bus had arrived in the previous half-hour. The courteous reply came back a little later in the sense that the bus should be arriving soon – given that the Qrendi and Mqabba festas had somehow disrupted the routes.
An airport-bound bus came along and picked us all up to the MIA – from where each one took to the Valletta to either stop on the way or to pick up another bus home from Porte des Bombes or Floriana. No extra cost, of course, despite the not pleasant delay.
The Arriva bus service, as on that day, had been operating only a mere six weeks in Malta.
To-date, we have been stuck by the ‘Malta Transport (dis)Service’ since last March.
“There is no need to complain anymore” said that idiot.
Ouch! This old man is in for a surprise, when he gets to know the next operators will be Spanish (Inglizi u Spanjoli, mhux xorta?). Dawn mhux “taghna f’taghna” ha nergghu nkunu. Back to the drawing board in a couple of years.
They won’t be Spanish. It’s all smoke screen. They will be a Maltese consortium which will cost the tax payer almost the same sum the dockyard used to cost us.
Minister Joe Mizzi said himself that subsidies could amount to around 40 to 45 million annually.
With Arriva the subsidies were capped at a maximum of 10 million and the company forked out the rest.
How the PN isn’t calling for Mizzi’s resignation is beyond me.
I would make all bus rides free of charge for everyone. I always was a radical.
Bogota’ managed its revival using what is perhaps the best application of the rapid bus transit type system.
It’s feeder secondary routes are free, main ‘stations’ being nodes where tickets are required.
Main boulevards were wide enough to close off a lane, feeder routes weren’t. It soon became obvious people preferred to bike to the nearest station.
What started off as a social experiment to rework the distance between rich and poor created pockets of traffic free ‘ghettoes’ increasing property values.
Labour and its newspaper Times of Malta worked to the opposite.
The same system in China failed to take off.
Access, as much as the virtual type, is a right.
http://piecefit.com/gallery/img/91.jpg
Enough said.
Let them stew in their own juice – or sweat.
Nobody mentions the fact that older persons have to use mini-vans with high steps and have to open and close the heavy doors themselves.
Remember when the mayor of Paola complained that residents were stressed due the ‘racket’ caused by automatic opening doors.
Too many bus routes converged onto Paola Square he said, leading to and from everywhere, go figure.
What will be the greatest waste of money and resources is the absolute lack of any lesson learnt and recorded.
It’s always from scratch with Labour, ghax inkella mhux Maltin hielsa. Sigh.
The system will fail. And it will ‘ghax taghna f’taghna.’
That old man is the quintessential commuter, invariably the same route.
And he won’t accept anyone else on ‘his’ bus, thus routes cannot change. Call it a glorified taxi to Valletta.
Valletta, where ministri have their bazuzli and appuntamenti can be had.
The opposite of design. Labour’s project is this vile.
People like David choose this way of life, if one had to offer David a day ticket in Milan’s or London’s undergrounds, he’d be at a loss what to do.
David wouldn’t realise he gets to travel on trams and surface transport as well.
It’s called interface, where user and system create function.
Delia failed to explain interface, actually there was no interface. Even distinct colour helps, no sign of that, fatal mistake.
What’s horrific now is that the Valletta pensjonant gets to determine who commutes, Times of Malta following religiously with a microphone.
The routes were designed by mandarins who lived and worked all their lives in Malta. THAT, my dear Jozef, was the reason it was a shambles.
You need people who’ve lived and commuted in a metropolis.
Yes, that too.
It’s also our tendency to be nasty to each other.
I’ve seen impromptu committees made up of everyone and their dog whenever some old lady asked for directions elsewhere.
Even because a system requires a minimum of cognition of concept.
Never saw a map outlining instantly how it works; the real challenge. Strange, coming from the same administration which executed an exemplary changeover to the Euro and one of Europe’s most successful waste separation campaigns.
In Malta, people just aren’t courteous to each other, except forced smiles and servile entertaining the turist mitluf, only then is Malta supposedly very najs.
One does think we’re either infatuated with everything ‘ta’ barra’ or viciously ‘Maltese’. No balance whatsoever.
Times of Malta’s agenda, to this day, incomprehensible. Whatever it is, because it still is, definitely not in our collective interest.
Playing dumb and passive now that our taxes shall subsidise abuse is also part of the problem.
I thought newspapers had an editorial line, not this snide attempt at denigration. Then I see the line-up of ‘award winning journalists’ and it’s clear.
Believe me when I tell you they’re as dumb and in love with themselves gracing some radical chic party. I think that’s nasty too.
Herman Grech is clearly in love with himself. That’s not bad in itself, but he is also not angry at anyone. So his editorial line is just stuff that makes him look good, not the stuff of editorial fisticuffs.
I have been to Malta several times and one of the most displeasing things is the total overcrowding of the buses.
Knowing what a sardine feels like and all you hear from the bus driver is “move back”.
Is there no law stating the amount of people who can stand, and if the buses are so overcrowded why are there not more regular buses? It’s not rocket science.
Another thing that really p****s me off is the number of people who are prepared to push in to get on the bus and the driver allowing this to happen.
Don’t they know the meaning of queuing or are they that ignorant that they don’t care about any one but themselves? Try telling them not to push and they totally ignore you or swear at you in some foreign language.
It’s about time something was done.