The metro: An issue of transparency and honesty

It is unbelievable how government functionaries went all agog on Tuesday when MaltaToday revealed the contents of a metro study commissioned by Infrastructure Malta three years ago.

The study carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a big four audit firm, analysed the financial feasibility of a three-line underground rail network. The routes—labelled Red, Blue and Green—were defined by Infrastructure Malta to cater for population and work density and based on a previous study carried out by Arup, a consultancy firm.

Unfortunately, this report never saw the light of day and the plan to invest in a metro network was shelved. There was never any real discussion on its feasibility, or whether the investment should first focus on just one line with the possibility of expanding the network’s reach in the future. If these discussions were held nobody outside government’s inner circle was privy to them. Indeed, government quietly shelved the pre-2022 metro roadshow—for a time its literature had also been removed from the online sphere—and we were only told it was too expensive when we pushed for answers.

The PwC study laid down the numbers, taking into consideration different scenarios of how the development of three routes could be financed and its impact on public expenditure depending on the financing model used. The study was based on the concurrent construction of three lines with a total length of 29km at a cost of €4 billion. The study showed that this network could be completed and be fully operation in just over five years.

The Nationalist Party’s metro proposal mimics just one of the lines identified in the PwC report—the Blue Line between Pembroke and the airport—and thus is a less costly venture and more doable within the five-year timeline.

The Labour Party’s response was to dismiss the PwC report as a preliminary study and argue it would have pushed the country’s debt beyond the EU threshold. There was no nuance in the PL’s statement. It simply hit out at the PN, accusing it of copying a study that was later discarded.

The PwC report is not the beginning and end when it comes to planning and executing a metro project. But it certainly could have provided the basis for an honest discussion had the government been transparent about its intentions and plans. The truth is that somewhere along the line, government got cold feet and abandoned the idea of a metro altogether.

It then came out with a new transport plan on the eve of the 2026 election. It is a good plan because it encompasses several modes of transport in an interconnected system of travel. However, the new plan’s proposed hybrid light rail just skirts around the St Julian’s-Sliema-Gżira conurbation. This is based on the premise that passing the route underground in this densely populated region would raise costs much higher than the estimated €2.8 billion.

We had to take the government’s word for it. But all the while a financial feasibility study done three years earlier but kept hidden, showed that a single underground line between Pembroke and the airport would cost half that amount.

We do not purport to be an authority on the feasibility of mass transport plans. But we do care about transparency and honesty, both of which were missing in the manner this issue was handled by the government since it first floated the metro proposal in 2021.