Over the past months, a new source of public exasperation has been created and has joined the length of waiting time at the Mater Dei Hospital Emergency Department, as possibly the main source of public discontent.

It speaks volumes about the bubble-like atmosphere in the media and in politics as a whole that it has, so far, remained not properly described and tackled in the mainstream media.

We are speaking today of the horrible bus facilities at Mater Dei. It is obvious that those who get around by means of their own car (and even more those who are taken anywhere by their drivers) will not have any idea of the suffering and discomfort of ordinary people.

It used to be said that Valletta was a city ‘built by gentlemen for gentlemen’. On the same terms, one may say today that Mater Dei is a ‘hospital built by doctors for doctors’.

It is very clear that whoever planned the hospital and took the strategic decisions about the way it is laid out, had no idea how important access to the hospital through the use of public transport actually is. In the bad old days of St Luke’s Hospital there was the good old bus 75 which dropped you at the main gates and this was later augmented by other bus routes.

When the hospital migrated to Mater Dei, the government forced the bus owners to run services to the hospital and paid for them, even if the buses were empty.

Then came Arriva and the wisdom (or otherwise) of its planners. Mater Dei was made into an important interchange. But there was simply no infrastructure.

Even today, the buses come up, drop off people on one side of the road, then negotiate the roundabout at the hospital’s entrance (many times obstructed by cars dropping off people or worse waiting for people) and pick up passengers on their way down the road.

There are just two bus stop shelters on either side of the road.They are far too small to take the amounts of people waiting, milling around, exposed either to the cold winds of these days (seriously endangering the health of those who have just come from the hothouse atmosphere of the hospital’s wards) or to the blistering sun.

This interchange does not even have the electronic signboards that have been put on most interchanges and many bus stops that tell you when your bus is coming. There is only one man running around and shouting out the destinations to bewildered passengers, many of whom are not yet attuned to the new Arriva system. One of these men is a modern day hero, but his shift mates just do not have the same kind of stamina and are consequently ineffective.

Somehow, people get to board their buses. Somehow, no-one has dropped dead there so far.

It is clear that if the hospital were to be re-designed, a spacious and comfortable underground bus station would have been planned for the interchange, from the outset. Today’s Arriva system is two-pronged. Apart from this interchange at the entrance, there is another down the road for the bus routes coming from the towns and villages, which is next to one of the entrances to the university. So most people coming on the direct routes that were hurriedly introduced last November have to change their buses there (though some prefer to walk into the hospital from its back door, so to speak). That’s another sign of bad planning and hasty remedies, but still it sort of works.

What is really urgent is to solve the exposure to cold winds and blistering sun at the front doors of the hospital. This needs to be done, with the minimum of fuss, and with all those involved finding a solution, rather than making it worse. It is not that difficult.