Opposition finally recognising transport reform success - Austin Gatt

Gatt said that after two months of “coordinated insults”, Labour leader Joseph Muscat has started “recognising the inevitable: the incontestable success of the public transport reform.”

“As Joseph Muscat has said, for the first time the service being provided is of high quality, courteous, and through comfortable and modern vehicles,” Gatt’s ministry said.

“Joseph Muscat now is recognising also that the preparation for the new service was done through effective consultation with local councils... aside from the obvious insult to councils by implying they were incapable of reading maps, it has to be said that the consultation was not done behind closed doors.”

Gatt said Muscat had two years of consultation to share any knowledge he had.

Gatt added that Muscat also did not recognise the shaky start of the Arriva service, which he said were primarily due to the lack of one-third of the drivers necessary to run the service. “This shortfall – coordinated and motivated by people who signed a contract to start working – could not have been anticipated by government, far less by the operator.”

Gatt added that Muscat “surely” did not anticipate the problem either, “as one can assume that if he did, he wouldn’t have kept this information to himself.”

He added that in the meantime, government is hard at work tweaking the routes “to better cater for the demands of passengers.”