Despite free public transport and more routes, most people still refuse to shift to buses.
Modal-share data confirms the claim. The Maltese 20/20 Strategy survey (March 2025, n≈3,000 respondents) recorded personal car at 53% of daily trips, walking at ~14%, and bus at 12.8%. Bus modal share moved from 10.8% (2023, free PT live) to 12.8% (2025) — a two-percentage-point gain across the full free-PT era. Car remains four times the bus share. Free public transport delivered a real headline ridership step-up (per the +36.6% YoY in 2023 — see #337) but did not produce a substantive modal shift away from cars: people are taking more bus trips, but cars still dominate. Passenger-car stock continued to grow across the same window (+12.7% 2017-2024). Both can be true: more PT trips AND more cars. Borg's literal claim — that most people did not shift to buses — is supported.
Modal-share data confirms the claim. The Maltese 20/20 Strategy survey (March 2025, n≈3,000 respondents) recorded personal car at 53% of daily trips, walking at ~14%, and bus at 12.8%. Bus modal share moved from 10.8% (2023, free PT live) to 12.8% (2025) — a two-percentage-point gain across the full free-PT era. Car remains four times the bus share. Free public transport delivered a real headline ridership step-up (per the +36.6% YoY in 2023 — see #337) but did not produce a substantive modal shift away from cars: people are taking more bus trips, but cars still dominate. Passenger-car stock continued to grow across the same window (+12.7% 2017-2024). Both can be true: more PT trips AND more cars. Borg's literal claim — that most people did not shift to buses — is supported.
We tested Borg's claim against the Maltese 20/20 Strategy modal-share survey (commissioned 2025, n≈3,000), the NSO Transport Dashboard ridership totals 2017-2023, NSO passenger-car stock series 2017Q1-2024Q1, and standard modal-share methodology (share of trips by mode, not share of people who have ever used a mode). The methodological question is whether free public transport produced a meaningful shift in how Maltese residents make daily trips.
Verdict lands at True because the modal-share data is unambiguous: bus share is 12.8% in 2025, up just two percentage points from the pre-free-PT baseline; car share remains 53%, roughly four times the bus share; and Maltese passenger-car stock has continued growing across the same window (+12.7% 2017-2024). Free PT delivered an absolute step-up in trip count (a real policy win) but it did not produce a behavioural shift away from cars. Borg's literal claim — that most people still refuse to shift to buses — is directly supported by the share-of-trips data.
Do most Maltese really still refuse to shift to buses despite free public transport
The right test for Borg's claim is modal share — the share of daily trips made by each mode — not absolute ridership. Absolute bus trips have risen substantially under free PT (+36.6% in 2023 alone — see our companion fact-check). But the share of trips taken by bus is the metric for whether people actually changed how they get around. On modal share, the picture is straightforward: cars still dominate, and free PT moved the bus share only two percentage points.
Modal share — cars 53%, bus 12.8%
Cars take 53% of daily trips. Buses take 12.8%. Walking ranks above buses. The bus is third by trip share — a minority mode, dwarfed by the car and roughly equal to walking. That is the picture Borg is describing.
How much did free PT move the needle?
Free public transport was introduced in October 2022. By 2023 (first full year free) the bus modal share was 10.8%; by the 2025 survey it had risen to 12.8% — a two-percentage-point gain.
A two-percentage-point move on a 13% base is real but small. Car share dropped by a similar amount in the same window (55% → 53%). The structural relationship — cars dominate, buses are a minority mode — has not changed.
Cross-check — cars are still growing under free PT
If free PT had triggered a meaningful modal shift, we would expect passenger-car stock to plateau or decline. It has not. NSO quarterly motor-vehicles data shows passenger-car stock growing across the entire free-PT era:
- 2022Q4 passenger cars: 303,261
- 2023Q4: 308,069 (+4,808)
- 2024Q1: 309,399 (+1,330 in one quarter)
- End-2025: 335,734 (~73.4% of 457,403 total motor vehicles, per NSO Q4 2025)
Across 2022Q4 → 2025Q4 the passenger-car stock grew by approximately 32,500 vehicles — over the exact period when free PT should have been pulling people out of cars. Both can be true: PT ridership rose AND car ownership rose. They are not substitutes in this dataset.
What does this mean for Bonett's free-PT credit-claim?
The two claims (Bonett: PT use rose substantially; Borg: most people did not shift to buses) are simultaneously true. Free PT delivered a real headline ridership step-up — millions of additional trips, +27% per-capita growth across 2017-2024.
So is the claim accurate?
Yes. The modal-share data is unambiguous: 53% car, 12.8% bus. The 2023 → 2025 move was a +2 percentage point gain on a low base. Free PT raised the absolute ridership but did not produce a substantive shift away from cars. Borg's literal claim — that most people still refuse to shift to buses — is directly supported by the share-of-trips data.
Verdict: True.