Matters have not been made exactly easy for bus passengers in view of the 3 July changeover to the Arriva system.

For one thing, the booklet plus insert sent to all houses have to be studied together because some routes, like the ones starting from the airport, are in the insert but not in the booklet. Secondly, this changeover will happen in one fell swoop in two weeks’ time, rather than a gradual changeover.

It will be a modal change since not just the buses will change but the system as well, introducing the new concept of a multi-hub system. I interviewed Manwel Delia, the man behind the changeover at the Ministry of Transport

We’re picking up complaints from bus users about the network Arriva sent to homes. Presumably you’re picking this up as well. When Arriva is asked to comment, all they say is they aren’t responsible for drawing up the network, but Transport Malta is. So did you get this wrong?

This is a big change and a big change brings about a big reaction. Come 3 July we will have a new network built from scratch and anyone using the buses will have to find their way around their own country like tourists in another land. Regular users know all the tricks of today’s network. They know when to walk to a bus stop that is further away to find a seat on a bus. They know the best place to switch buses without having to cross a wide road. They know just the right platform in Valletta where to wait for the quicker route home. Now they have to forget all that and learn new tricks.

If we were to ask today’s bus users where their buses should head they’d answer either Valletta or Mater Dei, because those are the only places buses go to. The rest have found another way of going to work or go shopping in Sliema, Paola, Mosta or the many other important but neglected destinations on the island. We need to get those people back on the buses too.

Studies conducted over the past several years all agreed on one thing: dependence on Valletta for interchange must be reduced and options for more destinations need to be brought closer to travellers. We have done just that. That signifies a change in current habits: a change that today’s regulars may at first perceive as a reduction in their service.

But you should not judge a service from a map. Switching buses on a journey in Malta is perceived very negatively mostly because it involves negotiating your way through buses at the Valletta terminus, climbing up steep steps, which for the elderly is a challenge best not done more than once a day, and waiting for a second bus without a real world timetable that tells you when it’s coming besides wasting time driving in a direction opposite to where one ultimately wants to go and paying double for the trip.

We have spent €9 million on upgrading interchange points no one has tried yet. We have a new fleet of air-conditioned low floor buses. We have removed the double-pay penalty for switching buses on the way to your destination. We have decentralised Valletta and we have new electronic sign boards telling you what time the bus is coming for real. No one has had the opportunity to judge us on those changes yet.

Let me give you some examples that seem illogical to me. Am I right in saying that all buses passing through St Paul’s Bay will now make a detour to the Buġibba terminus?

If you’re on that bus wanting to go to Valletta then yes, you might feel a stop in Buġibba is a detour. But assuming travellers only want to go to Valletta is the best way to guarantee that we never manage to achieve growth and get people who stay away from the buses because they don’t take them anywhere near the place they want to go.

For starters, Buġibba is an important destination in and of itself. Do not only think of the route towards Valletta but also the many people those routes pick up from Valletta itself, Sliema and San Ġiljan, Mosta and many other localities along the way.

But also think of the fact that many people departing from Mellieħa will find the new interchange in Buġibba the quickest way to go to Rabat, Attard, Birkirkara or Paola. For them the ‘detour’ to Buġibba cuts their trip to their final destination considerably compared with having to go to Valletta first and then make the change.

There are many examples of this on the new network. Obviously you’ve been speaking to the regular Mellieħa bus user who today uses the bus to Valletta and is now understandably complaining about a bus trip that will be longer by some 10 minutes. Our job was to make sure that those 10 minutes in an air-conditioned and frequent bus (a far cry from today’s experience) are exchanged for making a bus trip feasible to many car users from Mellieħa.

A reader mentioned places such as Swatar, Tarġa Gap, the Żonqor area of Marsascala as being underserved by the new system, and consequently a reduced service compared to the present situation. What is your comment?

That the analysis is wrong and it comes from the habit that a bus only shows up and is only useful if you are going to Valletta. The examples you mention and many others are being served by 30 new routes all over Malta, connecting them frequently to the nearest interchange point from which travellers can go directly to a long list of destinations now available to them for the first time.

Let me deal with your reader’s examples. Bus 110 will drive around the residential areas around Birkirkara, including Swatar, every 30 minutes, connecting the area to two of the best served interchange points on the island: Birkirkara (near the old railway station) and Mater Dei. Bus 103 serves residential areas on the outside of Mosta (as far off as Bidnija), taking them to either the Tarġa interchange (in Tarġa Gap) or the Rotunda interchange (in central Mosta) every 45 minutes from where they can reach several destinations on the island. Bus 124 drives through Żonqor every 30 minutes taking travellers there to Marsascala Centre or to the Deheb interchange in Żejtun from where they can choose how best to continue their journey. All of these areas will therefore be experiencing a considerable improvement on the connections they enjoy today.

You can’t expect anyone to know all these by heart from the word go. It takes time to get used to such a big change. But the important thing is giving people options, and if the only option available is going to Valletta, what we’ll have is several more years of declining passenger numbers as more people look for other means to get to where they want to.

You must have picked up the complaints about reduced links to Mater Dei and university.

When the new hospital opened it was clear that such an important destination cannot continue to be served approximately as poorly as Naxxar, say, is today. An entirely new network of Mater Dei-bound buses was grafted at huge cost on top of the existing Valletta network, which was not being reorganised at the time.

The reform presented an opportunity to use Mater Dei and Tal-Qroqq as major interchange points and destinations in themselves, but do so along with many other destinations. The hospital is an important destination for many people but certainly not the only place people need to get to. The university is an important destination but why serve that directly and not, say, MCAST?

Since it is manifestly impossible to have buses from everywhere to anywhere all the time, the important thing is to connect these destinations as comfortably as possible. True there will no longer be a bus directly linking Qrendi and Mater Dei every hour. But every 15 minutes one can catch a bus from Qrendi to the Airport interchange and hop on to the Mater Dei bus from the same spot. The flipside is they can do the same if they want to go to Birżebbuġa, Rabat, Buġibba, Sliema, San Ġiljan, Buġibba or Paola. They could not do that before.

Perhaps it could be useful (or perhaps not) to say which are the bus routes that will remain as they are today, with the only change being in the number.

Hardly any route will remain exactly the same as it used to be. Of course Valletta remains a very important destination and is served directly from all major towns, all new interchange points and over all major roads leading to Valletta at high frequency. But trying to match old numbers with new ones will basically confuse people mostly because of the little differences on the way.

Generally speaking, routes have been simplified to make them faster except to take them into interchange points to improve connections along the way. So for example, the old routes 32, 33 and 34 (variations on the Valletta-Żurrieq connection) are all being merged in route 71 with the addition of a stop at Airport for interchange but reducing the meandering around Żurrieq on arrival, which is instead served better by new internal routes 117 and 118. We are not simply switching numbers: we are changing the network from scratch, which is perhaps why there will continue to be many questions for a while after this system starts working.

Will the bus going to Rabat pass through Birkirkara or will it go straight up as it does today?

If you mean the bus from Valletta to Rabat, the routes (51, 52 and 53) go through Ħamrun and Attard sticking to the main thoroughfare and linking with the neighbourhoods of those towns at the Blata l-Bajda, Mile End and Ħal Warda interchange points. The three services provide a combined frequency of a bus every 10 minutes.

There will be a new direct connection between Rabat and Birkirkara however − X3, which starts at Buġibba, goes through Rabat and Birkirkara on its way to Paola and the airport. This service runs every 30 minutes.

Rabat will also be directly connected to its neighbouring villages (Baħrija, Dingli, Mtarfa, etc.) as well as several other towns such as Żurrieq, Siġġiewi, Żebbuġ and Mosta.

Will most of the buses going to Mosta now pass through Msida and Sliema, the only exceptions being 41 and 42?

Again, if you mean buses to Mosta from Valletta, there are three major ways to get there. Lines 41 and 42 (combined frequency of a bus every 10 minutes) go to Mosta through Birkirkara. Another option is to go through Mater Dei on line 31, which runs every 10 minutes, or on lines 21 and 23 that travel through Sliema with a combined frequency of every 10 minutes.

Of course what this means is that there’s a bus to Valletta from Mosta departing all the time but travellers can choose a comfortable way of going directly to any one of the intermediary destinations on the way (San Ġwann, Naxxar, the university and Mater Dei, Msida and Birkirkara: all important destinations and all important interchange points for onward travel).

Is Ta Giorni served by a bus service?

Yes it is. Bus 123 drives through Ta’ Ġiorni every 30 minutes letting passengers choose between a link to San Ġiljan and Pembroke interchanges at one end or Mater Dei interchange at the other. Both ends provide high frequency and high range options for onward travel.

So you think the new network is perfect?

Of course it isn’t. And even if it were, it would not be for long. Patterns change and the bus service must be ready to change with them. That was probably problem number one with the old service: it’s inability to change with the times.

But of course before we start thinking of how to change it, we should first try to give it a chance to work and for people to understand what the whole point of the transformation was. Now we’ll have the benefit of the wisdom and experience of Arriva (not to mention its profit motivation for chasing new customers all the time) to help us improve things. But the priority now is to get the bus on time and make it work.

Some things will not change: the contradictions for which one has to find a balance all the time. Everyone wants a bus stop close to home, but not too close. Everyone wants a direct service to their habitual destination but no one wants too many buses polluting their neighbourhood carrying people directly to other people’s destinations. Everyone wants the bus to stop them close to home on the way back, but no one wants a trip that takes too long stopping to pick up and drop people every few hundred metres.

We’ll keep our ears to the ground and in due time make changes to continue improving the network. But if we wait until we are unanimous about how great the network is, we’ll be stuck again in the paralysis of indecision that has shown the utter irrelevance, if not nuisance, to people’s travelling lives of our present public transport system.

Final message therefore: please try it out. By all means tell us how you think we can improve things. We are confident however that in a few days’ time we’ll all experience a big change for the better in the way we move around.