It has now been almost a year and a half since public transport in Malta was made free of charge.

It was a move lauded back then as Malta became only the second country in Europe – after Luxembourg – to take such a step, and one which the government said would enable a modal shift away from vehicular use.

But fast forward to the present day, and one must question what type of impact that the move has had?  Certainly it hasn’t a been a cheap undertaking for the government.

Transport Minister Chris Bonett told Parliament this week that since transport by bus became free of charge for Tallinja card holders on 1 October 2022, the government has spent a total of €31,616,239.40 to make up for the expense. This averages out to a mean monthly expenditure of €2.1 million.

If one does not take into account the first five months of free public transport – Between October 2022 and March 2023 – the government’s monthly expenditure on public transport exceeded the average amount of €2.1 million in all months excluding last April; April 2023 was just under around €100 from reaching the €2 million mark.

In the last six months of 2023, the average monthly expenditure was €2.35 million. The costliest month was October 2023 with a grand total of just under €2.6 million.

But has this spending translated into the desired impact?  Bonnett’s predecessor Aaron Farrugia had hinted last year that the measure had not.

“Did we see the shift we wanted in the country with free public transport? How many Maltese youths, adults, workers truly left their cars and, maybe twice or three times a week started using public transport?,” Farrugia had said in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday last summer.

He then answered his own question. “I don’t think this happened.”

The indications show that he is probably right:  car usage has not decreased by any means – on the contrary, more and more cars are being registered every day and there is no sign of that even starting to slow down.

Traffic as a result has increased – quite the contrary to what the government will have been aiming for by spending these millions of euros on this measure.

Record numbers of passengers on Malta’s buses are being registered, but the impression is that this measure has been a lot more impactful for foreign nationals living and working in Malta who most probably would not have considered buying a car on the island anyway, than it has in getting car owners to ditch their vehicles and trust public transport instead.

Farrugia had told The Malta Independent on Sunday in that interview that the government will be would be taking stock of the measure in October 2023 – a year after it was implemented – to decide on the way forward.

Not much has been heard since then, but the measure has remained in place and even strengthened to include some ferry trips as well. 

This means that it’s quite clear that the government’s review deemed the measure to be viable for at least another year – or perhaps deemed the embarrassment of removing such a keynote measure a year in as being too hot to handle.

Either way it would be good to see the review which the government was supposed to have carried out last October to understand whether this is a viable measure, or a measure draining money which can be spent in more effective ways to bring about a modal shift in transport.