There is one other facet of the recent changes in the Arriva route network that came in force a week ago that must also be commented upon.

In particular, Arriva is now more than ever focusing on keeping to the pre-set time frames. The new complicated route network just cannot work unless times are kept.

It is useless to create routes that stop at interchanges if the bus one expects to find just does not turn up.

This is one other consequence of bringing over an international company with its own international way of managing public transport. Hence, the insistence on time-keeping even though such an insistence may seem superfluous to those used to the Mediterranean way of doing things. Instead, keeping to the pre-set timings is also an expression of self-discipline, a very simple way of ensuring that parameters are set and adhered to.

Without such an insistence, discipline would degenerate and chaos result.

It is also true that too much an insistence on time-keeping may lead to buses whizzing along at far too much speed for safety. This is sometimes happening, mostly due to a very hazy understanding by some bus drivers and possibly by their supervisors too, of the times that must be kept.

Time-keeping makes for order and order makes for good results.

Hence our suggestion: Let us have a national competition for time-keeping. The competitors can be Arriva, Gozo Channel and Air Malta.

Enough said of the first competitor. Gozo Channel’s time-keeping is not as bad as it appears. It is simply not easy to keep to the times when you have a ship to manage, so many cars to pack in, the seas to navigate, and so many things can go wrong, and many in fact do tend to go wrong at the same time.

Then, of course, as happened last week, and apparently many times before, it can also happen that a ship is at the dockyard for a refit to provide a better service, and Gozo Channel loses the service of one of the two ships left available, and the traffic between Malta and Gozo is thus reduced to just one ship.

Certainly, at that level, nothing much can be done. Beyond that, however, the insistence on keeping to the pre-set times is important and essential in the case of Gozo Channel as well.

Lastly, Air Malta. We are never told how many flights leave late, and what is the percentage of such flights.

The main impression one gets is that by and large the Air Malta flights are no worse than other flights by other airlines.

Of course, there are airlines such as Ryanair that literally trumpet every time they arrive on time. Air Malta does not do that nor does it need to go to such extremes.

But it should put keeping to the established times high up in its list of priorities. As we said earlier, insisting on keeping to the proper time is a very useful way of self-discipline, or getting everyone involved around to keep to the time of departure and the time of arrival.

In this case, too, the airline stands to lose money through fines if it loses its arrival slots and has to take another slot. So there is also a financial consideration, directly connected, to bring to consideration.

So, let us have a national competition among these three competitors, to see who of them can manage to keep the better time-keeping.