Prime Minister Robert Abela on Wednesday revealed to journalists that there were new and updated plans for a metro system in Malta which would cost half the initially planned price.

The initially planned system, he said, would have set the country back €6 billion - but a new revised system with different routes which is being worked on would cost €2.8 billion, which Abela said is still "massive" and which he said also includes certain overruns which need to be accounted for.

The new plan is for a "hybrid" system, wherein parts of it will run underground, other parts at street level, and other parts which run above street level over undeveloped land.  Abela excluded running a metro line above people's properties.

The Prime Minister's comments came after Finance Minister Clyde Caruana poured cold water on plans for a metro or tram network, warning that Malta could be "royally screwed" if such a massive capital project went wrong.

Caruana has been consistently sceptical about the project, particularly owing to its gargantuan price tag and over uncertainty as to whether enough people will actually give up their cars in order to make the system viable.

His concerns are of course well founded and quite realistic: this will be an immensely expensive project and it needs to be viable: and for it to be viable, enough local people need to be willing to give up on using their cars - something which, so far, nobody has managed to make people do.

If the project is built but people fail to flock towards it, it risks becoming Malta's most expensive mistake ever, and a noose around the public's finances for many years and decades to come.

Prime Minister Abela played down his minister's scepticism however, saying that Caruana was simply being prudent and that one must understand that the country needs to invest in a viable transport system for the future.

In that sense, he too is right: it's clear that when it comes to transport Malta cannot keep following the road it is on.  There are too many cars on the streets, traffic is at an all-time high, road safety is still a question mark, and - infrastructurally speaking - there's only so many more roads that can be widened and so many more flyovers that can be built.  Roads in certain areas are at - and past - their feasible limits in terms of traffic, and there's nothing that can be done to fix that.

Having an efficient bus system is an important step - but not when this bus system is catered largely to tourists, and when, at the end of the day, the busses are getting stuck in the same traffic that the cars are getting stuck in. 

Malta needs to go a step further from where it is today and that is through a mass transport system.  There are key things which need to be kept in mind though.

The first is that there has to be a national consensus.  It is good that both Robert Abela and Alex Borg agree that both of their parties need to see eye-to-eye on this project.  If it does come to pass, in whatever format, then it is something which will span multiple legislatures which may be with different parties in government, hence why the country's political forces need to be - for a change - pulling the same rope.

But what is key is financial viability.  This may well be Malta's most expensive capital project, and it is being done on the basis of an educated gamble that enough people will shift to using it as their main mode of transport.

There isn't an immediate rush for this - what is important is that we get it right. Because if we get it wrong and the gamble doesn't pay off - as Clyde Caruana put it, Malta will be "royally screwed."