Malta Public Transport to invest in additional new buses

Malta Public Transport announced it will be investing in additional new buses this year.

“We have transformed the Public Transport operation into a financially sustainable one. For the first time in five years, the Maltese public transport system will be operating at a breakeven point in 2016. This is an achievement in itself, and has encouraged us to strengthen our investment in Malta with additional new buses, once again going beyond our contractual requirement,” Mr Felipe Cosmen, Chairman of Malta Public Transport, said.

“Over the past two years we have carried over 83 million passengers, with 40 million passengers in 2015 and 43 million passengers in 2016. These figures demonstrate that the confidence in public transport is growing steadily, with an increase of 15% since the company took over operations in January 2015.”

During the first two years Malta Public Transport faced a number of challenges, such as lack of buses, drivers, and strikes. Despite all this the company achieved a number of important milestones: • 95% of trips are departing within the scheduled time frames. This data is available because each and every bus in service is tracked by our Control Centre in real time. • The customer rating for Public Transport in Malta has increased from 6.6 in 2012 to 7.3 in 2016. • The fleet has been increased with 176 new, environmentallyfriendly buses, going from 260 to 380 buses; • The entire route network was changed in line with Government’s requirements, offering 17% more daily trips; • Passengers now have an easy-touse ticketing system, with over 80% using a tallinja card; • The tallinja APP lets customers check live running times from their smartphone. Over 100,000 passengers used it.