Punishing Pensioners

The Malta Independent on Sunday 
 

Rather than a new spring in the first 100 days of the new government that are nearing their end, we have had the same old lethargy and an industrial dispute concerning public transport that has involved the adoption of a very distasteful industrial action measure targeted specifically on pensioners.

I am not in any way suggesting that the Transport Association or bus owners are in the wrong or that they should not resort to industrial measures. Any industrial measure will cause discomfort as it is only through such discomfort or pain that industrial action can achieve its purpose. But in adopting industrial measures the Association must ensure that it is not only used as a last resort but that it keeps public opinion sympathetic to its cause notwithstanding the comfort that it causes. Targeting the pensioners sector which society goes out of its way to protect in acknowledgement of their past contribution to the present state of well-being, is certainly not the right way to win over public opinion.

Beyond the immediate bickering, public transport remains a sore national wound that must be addressed with vigour and determination to produce real lasting solutions. It is therefore unfortunate that from time to time the operator and the regulator find themselves in conflict with almost monotonous regularity and that more often then not the solution found is merely temporary. In and of itself such short-term patching would by the source of future larger disputes.

In most cases solutions are based on increase in fare prices unmatched by a commensurate increase in the value of the service, forcing more and more people to give priority to acquisition and use of private transport. In turn this would aggravate the problem of traffic congestion and environmental degradation whilst at the same time compounding the commercial viability of the public transport operators. They often see their revenue suffering a net reduction as they lose out on volume what they try to obtain through fare increases. So every so often they come back for more and the whole process is given another turn in the spiral that drives more and more users away from public transport leaving under 18’s and pensioners as the main users of such transport as a matter of necessity rather than choice.

True solutions to the public transport issue must take the problem outside the narrow parameters is has been consistently confined to. The matter has to be seen as a national problem concerning non-users as much as forced users.

The ultimate solution must reach a destination point that any fare increases must be well-out-weighed by an increase in the service value. And this cannot come about by the mere investment in new buses, though this of course remains a crucial part of the improved service quality necessary to revive public transport. We have to go much further.

Users of public transport have to start using it as a matter of choice not necessity. For this to happen public transport must by re-positioned to score much better on convenience over the alternatives means of private transport.

Some of this is already happening by default rather than design. The difficult availability and cost of parking (either through much increased cost of fees or through warden’s penalties) is already building comparative advantages for public transport. If these could be enhanced by other measures, then we might eventually get to a true lasting and efficient solution.

These measures have to include comfort, convenience and consistency. Comfort comes not only from new configuration of both buses and equipment but also in the quality of service offered by the drivers in their being paid and trained for respecting the rights and intelligence of public transport users. In this day and age the move towards air-conditioning and improved safety through locking doors whilst in motion is a must for making the service a popular choice rather than a suffering experience that cannot be avoided.

Convenience has to be enhanced by extending both the hours of service (especially late into the night on particular routes) as much as the spread of the network to improve the point-to-point services rather than operate all connections through the Valletta terminal. Convenience has to be enhanced also by giving public transport priority access on our road network. This could be done by restricting, and in some cases eliminating, private transport access to our city and village centres and by providing priority bus lanes on the main arterial roads. This would give public transport the added convenience to get you to your destination quicker than using private means.

Consistency comes in ensuring that the quality of service is maintained through quality control checks as much as by staff training attracting to the service employees who would be proud of their jobs rather than be considered as the bottom layer of society who could not make it to any better position.

When we do all this than we can seriously consider some fare increases which would still preserve the cost comparative advantages of the public service. It could very well be that even when we manage to get there the price and volume increases would still not make the service a commercially viable enterprise.

It is here that the state has to step in with a fiscal policy that would make non-users contribute to make public transport a popular and viable transport means both for social and environmental reasons. We might come to a stage that once the consumer has a real option of a clean, consistent, comfortable and cost-effective public transport and still insists on using private means of transport, than fiscally he could be made to contribute for the up-keep of public transport.

Then users or non-users would have a real choice that currently our pensioners do not have as they are unjustly and unwisely being used by the public transport operators to further their case in defiance of public opinion.