New mass public transport system to be announced by end of year

Plans for a new mass public transport system will be announced by the end of the year, the government has said.

The announcement came at a briefing for journalists ahead of the launch of a new economic strategy for the country called Malta Vision 2050.

No details were given about what sort of transport system it is considering.

Although plans for a €6.2 billion underground metro system serving 25 stations around Malta were unveiled in 2021, those plans have since been quietly shelved and conspicuously left out of Budget projections in subsequent years.

In a press briefing Monday, the government told journalists that following a consultation period, the finalised proposal for a mass transit system would be announced by the end of the year.

A policy document for the new economic vision announced Tuesday, while not directly referencing the type of transportation being considered, contains numerous references to such a move.

It explicitly highlights the “development of green public mass transportation systems” and calls for the development of a data-sharing service for government authorities to help identify “hot spot areas” and plan an “integrated transport system”.

Planned steps to improve “accessible citizen-centred services”, meanwhile, include “efficient mobility and transport infrastructures”. 

Speaking in an interview with Times of Malta in September, Transport Minister Chris Bonett said he was mulling the idea of a rapid bus transit system, similar to rail-based offerings but using exclusive lanes rather than tracks.  

Explaining the idea, Bonett said such a system would call at stations, with passengers then transfer to smaller, “feeder” buses to reach village centres.

Asked about the idea again last month, Bonett told Times of Malta he was still considering various options and would not be drawn into providing more details.

Bonett said that while he personally favoured a metro, developing such a system would “create certain financial complications,” and there was no EU funding for mass transit systems.

“I can speak about this with some authority because I spent two years as Parliamentary Secretary for EU funds... [but] I assure you if there are EU funds that can be acquired, I will definitely be the first one to go and get them.”

Should EU funds not be available for the project, the government would be forced to fund the project itself. No budget for such a system was included in Tuesday’s economic vision announcement, however.

Creating a mass public transport system separate from Malta’s existing bus routes has long tantalised policymakers across the political spectrum to ease the country’s perennial traffic woes. 

In 2022, the Opposition Nationalist Party unveiled its proposal for a trackless tram that would run on six circular lines and service industrial estates across Malta. 

The party had estimated the system would cost €2.8 billion and take five years to complete, serving nine hubs and 13 interchanges allowing passengers to commute across lines. 

At a press conference over the weekend, responding to recent government initiatives to reduce car use, Malta’s green party ADPD proposed its own transportation measures including preparing for a bus rapid transit system running in dedicated lanes and connected to park-and-ride facilities.