In a recent article, Konrad Xuereb provided a vision for a metro-served Malta by 2035. I have never been in favour of a metro in Malta, or any type of mass transportation system for that matter.

The reality is that the ‘critical mass’ required to justify such a huge investment simply is not there. We always seem to want to compare ourselves with London, Paris and a host of other cities, but we conveniently ignore the scores of other European cities, each with populations far larger than ours, that don’t have a metro.

Let’s be careful about investing heavily in something that will end up being one big white elephant.

Economic justification

Seriously, how many people would want to travel daily, hourly, every few minutes between Birżebbuġa or Mellieħa to the airport, or from Xewkija or Marsalforn to the airport? This transport dilemma is not new; indeed, it is the basic reason why buses between Valletta and Birżebbuġa are less frequent than those between Valletta and Sliema, for example. If it doesn’t make sense economically, it simply won’t work and the commuters from and to localities where the metro service will not extend will still, as a consequence, continue to face traffic on our roads, even post-2035, so to speak.

By contrast, only a few weeks ago, Joseph Muscat commented on mass transportation and mentioned critical mass, indicating that only the Paceville-Sliema-Valletta route “could” (his word not mine) perhaps justify a metro service. I would have to agree with him. But could a metro service really work?

More stations

Xuereb’s suggestion that 13 stations would suffice to cover all Malta and Gozo may be justifiable from an architectural planning perspective, but in order to achieve a true modal shift by a vast number of Maltese commuters, one needs to take the metro to the people, not the other way round.

It’s all about convenience, and this would imply that the route Prime Minister Joseph Muscat referred to may well require more frequent stops if it is to succeed.

Indeed, I would suggest that the Paceville-to-Valletta route would probably require up to 15 stations alone, including at the ‘Love’ monument, in Spinola Balluta Bay, Dingli Circus, Stella Maris Church in Sliema or thereabouts, the Ferries, Ta’ Xbiex yacht marina, Msida Church, The Mall in Floriana and others.

Yet, even if this were all possible, which properties could be identified to house each of these metro stations? Which houses would fall?

Numbers don’t add up

Recently, MIA handled the highest number of passengers ever, reaching 30,000 in one day. Were one to assume this happening every day of the year (four times more than Xuereb estimated in his article), this averages out at only 1,500 passengers per hour (based on 20 hours of operation per day to satisfy all flight times). Assuming one train every five minutes, only 62-63 travellers would board each train, assuming a 50:50 spread in both directions of travel. That’s about one busload, give or take.  Not very exciting, is it?

Pull the other one

Xuereb has suggested it would take 15 years to build. So what are commuters who have to get to work and back every day expected to do for the next 15 or 25 years? Grin and bear it, I suppose, as we’ve always done.

What are commuters who have to get to work and back every day expected to do for the next 15 or 25 years? Grin and bear it, I suppose

It’s also worth reminding ourselves that smaller road infrastructure projects took years to complete. Even the availability of capital to sustain such a huge investment will cause delays. Personally, I think that even just the Paceville-Sliema-Valletta link could take longer than what Xuereb has proposed.

In truth, the government will probably need to develop other medium-term infrastructure projects to run in parallel until Malta’s (or Sliema’s) metro is finally up and running. This will mean more money, of course, and, therefore, Xuereb’s assertion that current annual spending on road infrastructure could be channelled to finance the new metro is, well, inaccurate to say the least.

Xuereb estimates that the project will cost “only” €4 billion of taxpayers’ money. Using Xuereb’s timeline, this works out at a capital expenditure of just under €270 million per year on average. Putting things into perspective, Mater Dei Hospital cost this country €700 million (the original plan was for the hospital to cost one seventh of that, or thereabouts) and, during those years, the government didn’t have the money, or the energy, to invest significantly in anything else.

Bus feeder services

Xuereb is right to propose bus feeder services for each metro station. However, these will also mean more public financing. The government already contributes several millions every year to keep the current bus transport company afloat. How much more would the government have to dish out every year to sustain a newly reconfigured bus transport company, now with (smaller, more frequent) shuttle buses, an increased fleet and more drivers.

What about little Tony?

I believe that the metro cannot work alone, which is why Xuereb suggested bus feeder services. Here’s why. Assume for one moment that there is no change at all in the public bus transport system as we know it today.

Meet Tony Farrugia. It’s 2035 and Farrugia lives in Sliema, somewhere between Savoy and Zammit Clapp Hospital. He’s married with three children, and the family owns four cars. Farrugia works for a shipping company in Valletta. His wife, Mary, is a secretary at a government department in Floriana.  

Unfortunately for him, in 2020, the authorities only visualised one Sliema metro station and eventually built one at the Ferries in order to serve the hotels and retail centre. It is too far for Farrugia to walk to and from every day.

Mary Farrugia, too, can’t shift to the metro because she needs to pick up her daughter from school in Mrieħel every day, and there’s no convenient metro station close by, so she continues using her car.

Like his father, his second son also feels that the station is too far away, and opts for his eco-friendly bicycle ride to university, while Farrugia’s eldest drives to his pharma company in Bulebel industrial estate because no station was ever contemplated in that part of Malta.

In a nutshell, 15 or 25 years and a few billion euros later, there has been no (transport) modal shift by the Farrugia family as a result.

Future technologies

There are many more questions to be asked  – ticket costs, train frequency, train capacity, early hour and late-night operations and so on – but here’s one final point.

We’re talking about 15 years to build and a 30-year payback period! Where will we all be in 45 years’ time? Technology is moving at a very fast pace, and it will move even faster in the years to come.

Cars as we know them today will certainly cease to exist in the next 45 years. Electric and driverless cars are just round the corner, relatively speaking, and passenger-carrying drones and their sea counterparts, called capsules, are on the horizon.

A casual search on Google will show that even more radical innovation solutions are already being proposed, studied and tried out. For example, companies around the world are already testing VTOLs (vertical take-off and landing vehicles) to replace private cars.

Is there a danger, therefore, that Malta will be investing in a metro system that will be overtaken by other technological solutions? Put differently, will metros still be around in the next 45 years?

Management solutions

I’ve often been asked what the solution is. My immediate response is: the next 10-15 years involve traffic management solutions. They’re far cheaper, to start with, and, unlike infrastructure, one can experiment with them and always return to zero if one doesn’t work as effectively as expected.

These well-known, well-documented solutions focus on limiting vehicles on our roads at any given time.

Solutions like ‘my car today, yours tomorrow’ and congestion charges on primary roads at peak times are tried and tested and have served communities well overseas. And there are plenty more, including reducing new vehicle registrations. It seems, however, that we are not ready to emulate everything that is being implemented abroad. 

As for the long term, God only knows; but I suspect that, by then, our children or their children will either have smart, energy-efficient, driverless or flying cars or ‘beam-me-up-Scotty’ transporters.

George Papagiorcopulo is a management consultant.