A Eurostat survey has found that in 2024, 58% of people in Malta did not use any public transport whatsoever. This is the eighth highest frequency for people in any EU country to never use public transport, despite Malta effectively making its Tallinja service free in October 2022.

This Eurostat data found that in 2024, 10.3% of people in Malta used public transport on a daily basis, 9.1% used public transport on at least a weekly basis, 7.3% claimed to use it on a monthly basis, 15.4% said they utilise public transport services less than once a month, and nearly six in every ten (58.0%) said they "never" used it.

Malta and Luxembourg are the only EU countries to offer free public transport to all residents on a national scale. While Malta effectively offers free bus services through the distributed Tallinja cards, Luxembourg, in April 2020, opted to make all bus, tram, and train services within the country free, without a card system, for all its residents and tourists - with the exception of first-class train passengers.

This Eurostat data ranks Luxembourg as the EU country with the highest share of its people using public transport every week (23.1%), and the EU Member State with the lowest proportion of its people stating that they never used public transport services throughout 2024, (15.7%).

Furthermore, 18.9% of people in Luxembourg use these services every day, 17.2% said they use public transport every month (third highest among EU countries), and 25.1% less than once a month (fifth highest in the EU).

In contrast, Malta's mark of 9.1% using public transport every week is the sixth lowest proportion recorded in this Eurostat survey out of the EU-27.

Compared to Malta, the seven countries to record a higher proportion of their people who never used public transport throughout 2024 were Cyprus (85.0%), Italy (68.0%), Portugal (67.8%), France (65.1%), Slovenia (61.6%), Greece (61.3%), and Croatia (58.6%).

Following Luxembourg as countries with least people not using public transport were Estonia (26.6%) and Sweden (26.7%).

Latvia (19.2%) and Estonia (18.2%) recorded the highest shares of people using public transport every week after Luxembourg.

On average, across the entire European Union, 50.6% of EU citizens did not use public transport in 2024. Moreover, 10.7% used public transport daily, 11.6% used it every week, 10.0% used it every month, and 17.1% used it less than once a month.

All participants in this Eurostat survey were of at least 16 years of age.