The end result of last week’s mayhem on the roads has been to hasten the process of liberalisation, a top government official has said. “Where we would have probably got there in around two years’ time, we are there now,” the official told this newspaper.

Why the transport workers got it so wrong was precisely due to the distortion that is the direct result of the monopolies in the sector. Instead of trying to drum up popular support for their cause, they showed their disdain, even their hatred, against their own clients – the people, the tourists – which is precisely how the monopolists’ mind works since they do not operate in a competitive world and so couldn’t care less about attracting customers and clients.

Take the buses, for example: on the strength of the agreement they forced on the PN government in 1995 (Minister Michael Frendo), the less people they carried, the more they got in government subsidy.

This explains the sheer hostility many of the bus owners exhibit towards the patrons of the service. It was not in their interest to take more passengers on board and it was not in their interest to improve the service.

Their association was managed by a committee of bus owners and run along the lines of how bus owners feel about structuring their work: they avoid what they, as bus owners, do not want to do, and do what they, as bus owners, want to do. Hence the insistence on rotation, and on bigger and bigger buses even when the narrow winding roads of Malta’s villages are not made for such huge buses, and when too little patronage would argue in favour of smaller buses or even minibuses at some point. Hence too the inability to put bigger buses on those routes that are heavily patronised, such as Sliema – St Julian’s.

Ironically, the government’s plans for public transport, as declared over and over again in the past months, has always been to increase the patronage of public transport and cut down on the usage of cars which have made Malta the country with the densest car usage in the EU.

But the present bus system and the present bus owners just did not want to widen public patronage because that would have eaten into their ingrained habits – such as having 500 buses on the cards but only half of them working on any given day. Such as expecting the government to finance any improvement in the service and then using the bus, bought with government help, for private hire.

Backed by EU legislation, the way forward for the bus service is either:

• the government nationalizes the bus service and creates its own agency run on professional lines and standards; or

• the system moves from today’s multiplicity of ownership (almost as many owners as there are buses) to concentration of ownership, with the bus owners, if need be, forming a cooperative that is managed professionally, and not by them as at present.

Even so, however, there are enough hints that the government is thinking of introducing mass public transport systems such as tramways along specific and highly-patronised routes such as Sliema – St Julian’s. Feasibility studies are already being made in this regard.

At the other end of the scale, the government is arguing that many more cross-country routes must be introduced and that certain outlying villages and remote areas could be better served with more frequent services by minibuses.

What everyone must understand, the high government official told this paper, is that this is the last chapter of a 50-year story.

The case of the red and white minivans is even stranger. There are 440 red minivans in Malta. Anybody can buy a minivan but it has to be painted white. And if it has more than 14 seats, an ADT man comes around and unscrews them so that the van will have less than 14 seats.

This may sound whimsical or simply curious were it not for the implications. It means that if you want to pick up 14 people from the airport you either hire two white minivans or else hire a red one.

The market is thus heavily discriminating against the white vans, not just in tourist transport but also in school and factory transport.

Bolstered by such a monopoly, the red van owners just could not be bothered to invest. This is why the EU legislation regarding seatbelts could not be implemented, for the EU itself decreed that pre-1997 vans need not have seatbelts. But the EU did not consider cases such as Malta’s where the system is heavily discriminatory and there is no level playing field.

Introducing liberalization in this sector thus means, as the government sees it, removing all discrimination between those who have anything from nine to 25 seats and introducing open competition.

The hearses have enjoyed their monopoly since 1959 when it was introduced to be enjoyed for just three years. It has stayed there ever since and successive governments have been pushed, enticed or encouraged to keep it that way.

The situation regarding taxi drivers is rather more nuanced. There are no EU rules on taxis. In Britain, for instance, around half the cities have a completely deregulated taxi service whereas others have a numerus clausus.

Even here, however, the government aims to remove the numerus clausus for white taxis and introduce full liberalisation in this sector as well, opening the market which today is restricted to a mere 200 taxis.

Talks with the representatives of taxis and minivans, due to begin on Friday, will continue over the summer, so that by the end of the season the new system will be in place.

Ministry officials paid tribute to the help and support they got last week, not just from the police and MIA, ADT, Air Malta, MTA and hotel and tour operators, but also from the public through the very new service that are the blogs. It was the blogs that continually helped the people in government feel the support of the population and gauge the public’s perception of what was going on.