Can one not but look enviously at empty buses plying some new routes seemingly with all the time in the world? Then too, when will all the bus stops along the longish route to the Gozo ferry embarkation capo linea boast a bus shelter, be it in Maltese stone, the old iron and glass variety or the more modern advert prone foreign looking ones?

More often than not, using public transport from Cirkewwa to Valletta and vice versa means that some have to stand up in the aisle for more or less half the journey, as public buses seem in short supply on the route. Incidentally, at times one ends up like a veritable Mr Bean with first wood shavings and then the whole back of one seat immediately in front resting on one’s lap, as it became unhinged enroute on one post-WWII privately-run public transport bus. Luckily a one off. Commuting daily between Gozo and Malta is no laughing matter, it is a veritable “adventure”.

I must not lay the blame for such shortcoming on bus drivers, (or dispatchers) many of whom I have found to be responsible people who patiently navigate through several bottlenecks, cranes or trenches blocking some road arteries, while having to cope with issuing tickets, giving change, advising commuters to move back down the aisle to allow a few more to board and not make them stay at sometimes chock-full bus stops.

J. Bonett

Ghajnielem