There is a huge positive expectation of the new Arriva public transport system, due to be inaugurated on Sunday.

For a long time we have grown used to the yellow and red buses, so much so they became part of our colourful landscape and tourists have the time of their lives taking pictures of them.

But as the hour of their demise grows near we are getting to notice more and more the decrepit state they are in, the old structure, the uncomfortable boarding (those high steps), the polluting engines – to say nothing of the drivers and the antiquated system itself.

By Saturday evening, all that (and much more) will be consigned to the scrapheap of history. Future generations can console themselves with YouTube versions of the buses just as we console ourselves with old photos of the buses when they were in different colours, the tram or the railway.

Obviously now, the new system will take some getting used to, and there will inevitably be teething troubles.

Many have been arguing, over the past weeks, whether the new system consisting of interchanges is better than the radial system which brought everyone to Valletta. Many have argued that the new system, under certain aspects, makes a journey take longer.

It is inevitable that, especially in the first days, the new will be strange and the old sorely missed. As we had in those chaotic days when we changed over from the Maltese lira to the euro, people trying to juggle the two systems will end up confused. The best way to tackle a big modal change is to switch to the new system without looking back. Just as happened with the euro, in time people will adjust to the new system and make it run as it should.

Eventually, people will find the new system has its plus points, apart from the more obvious ones of a clean non-polluting engine, a brand new bus, clear signs, etc. The multi-modal system, instead of a system radiating out of Valletta like spokes of a wheel, will become the backbone of the new system and people will learn to use it to their benefit just as we all do with trains on the Underground and even mainline trains abroad.

It is now obvious the previous system (that is, the one being phased out on Saturday) could have never responded to the test of time. Its origins in history was that while the rudimentary mass transportation systems of the 1920s were limited to the Valletta to Mtarfa railway and the ferries across the two harbours, individual entrepreneurs started to import buses (char-a-bancs) on an individual basis and to select for themselves those routes where they thought they stood to make money.

And, apart from the Sliema buses owned by Mr Gasan, each bus was owned by an individual owner. The bus service, for all that it had, in time adopted a common colour and a unified service, and remained very much an association of individual bus owners.

This system could never make money. The bus owners tried to overcome the limitations by working harder and harder, by eliminating the bus conductors, and by handling all money transactions themselves. Meanwhile, as patronage slumped, the number of buses remained the same, so they were obliged to work one day on and one day off. In other words, each bus was unproductive and the system was exponentially unproductive. That is why, for instance, at any given time, there would be some 50 or more buses waiting at the Valletta terminus (apart from the 250 which were not on duty on that day).

Working all those hours was not fair on the workers (and maybe led to flaring tempers) and was not at all, efficient. And of course, working with buses that were second- (or third-) hand when they came to Malta meant, apart from environmental issues, that the engines already had massive mileage and guzzled fuel like there’s no tomorrow. Many around the world believe that when you cannot afford to change your own car, it means you are in a very bad state financially. Ditto the country.

That is not the way we are, nor is it the way we want to be perceived. Apart from the very uncomfortable rides, the bus system was an insult to all users, as well as to Malta’s perception in the eyes of tourists. For all the nostalgic comments now appearing on news services such as the BBC, it is only we, the Maltese public, who can say how uncomfortable, noisy, dirty, polluting and even dangerous these buses are. So let Arriva arrive.