Alex Borg: Light rail plan is not what Malta needs

Updated 12.20pm

Opposition leader Alex Borg has criticised the government's plan to build a 24km light rail transport system, calling it a "half-baked" proposal.

"How can you claim you've got a solution when you're asking people to wait for 15 years?" Borg asked in a video posted to social media. 

"This is a plan that leaves too many questions unanswered...  Malta cannot take any more uncertainty. The country needs a real, integrated, serious mass rapid transport plan."

Borg said the PN would be presenting its own proposal for such a system "at the opportune moment". 

Earlier, the PN warned that the Labour proposal unveiled on Thursday would mean motorists will continue to be stuck in traffic for the next five years, while consultants made millions.  

The plan presented by Transport Minister Chris Bonnett is to develop a light rail line linking St Paul’s Bay to the airport. Construction is only forecast to begin in 2031, with a section between the airport and Valletta envisaged to be completed by 2036 and the full line wrapped up by 2041. 

The government had initially announced an underground metro system in 2021 but dropped that plan, citing concerns about its mammoth cost. At the time, the Opposition promoted the idea of a bus-centred transport network it dubbed a "trackless tram". 

On Friday, the PN said that the government's latest proposal was thin on specifics and details. 

"The only ones set to benefit are the consultants who, with the PL in government, will continue to be paid millions for more studies.

"So far, all we have seen are studies, and if Labour is re-elected – by its own admission yesterday – you are facing another five years stuck for hours in traffic while the government continues studying matters so that perhaps work may begin in another four years’ time, and in another 15 years we may have a new system."

Taxpayers will pay for the studies, while the debt continues to rise, shadow ministers Toni Bezzina, Bernard Grech and Ivan Castillo said in a statement. 

The party said that the government has not accounted for the cost of the metro project.

"This very week, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana admitted that the figures would need to be revised, while warning that heaven forbid a project of this scale were to go wrong, as it would have a serious impact on the government’s finances.

"By contrast, with PN, you know where you stand. Within the first 100 days of a new Nationalist Government led by Alex Borg, an implementation framework for a mass transport project would be launched, and within the first legislature, the first line of this modern transport system, which our country so urgently needs, would be completed."

Bonett: PN was shown the plan 

Responding on Facebook, Bonett accused the PN of trying to “destroy the plan… simply because it came from the government.”

He said he had shown the plan to PN representatives first and “extended my hand” to work together “in the interest of the people… our children… Malta."

He accused PN leader Alex Borg and the PN of turning the project into “a political football”, saying “the mask has fallen” and that, for them, “the Nationalist Party is above the country and above the Maltese people.”

In a statement on Friday, the PL welcomed the government's transport plan, which it said "will take Malta to the next level".

"This plan builds on and further improves what was announced earlier. It is a plan that has taken the time it needed to be properly defined, and one that is deliverable," it said in a statement.