Julian Borg
Partit Nazzjonalista
- True 2 67%
- Mostly true 0 0%
- + Context 0 0%
- Mixed opinion 0 0%
- Unproven 0 0%
- Misleading 0 0%
- Unlikely 0 0%
- False 1 33%
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.
Borg's claim collapses two separate things — the 15-year horizon and the 'nothing about this legislature' framing — and the second half is directly contradicted by the official Malta in Motion 'Implementing the Vision — A phased approach' infographic that Transport Minister Bonett shared at the Malta in Motion presentation on 23 April 2026. The plan runs across seven time-bands: Past 2 yrs · Today · 0-2 yrs · 2-5 yrs · 5-10 yrs · 10-15 yrs · 15+ yrs. The 0-2 yrs column — explicitly the current legislature window — contains concrete near-term deliverables across all six workstreams: ferry service expansion (Sliema-Buġibba-Gozo, Marsaskala-Valletta), electrification of the Gozo bus fleet plus a new bus services concession, Msida and Pembroke pedestrian bridges, C-SAM (Central Spine Active Mobility) Phase 1 completion Pieta-to-Floriana, publication of the National Parking Strategy plus new Park and Ride sites at Pembroke and Bormla, and expansion of off-peak freight/logistics services. The 15-year horizon is correct — the anchor La Vallette Line metro construction starts 5-10 years out and opens in the early 2030s — but the inference Borg wants the audience to draw (that Malta in Motion does nothing for years) is contradicted by the published phased approach.
The government's own National Transport Master Plan 2030 (published November 2025) directly supports Borg's framing. Its headline finding: the average bus journey in Malta takes three times longer than the equivalent car trip — even though most residents live just minutes from their nearest bus stop. So the structural barrier to bus use is not access (the network coverage is good) but journey-time competitiveness (buses are slow once you're on them). The Master Plan also estimates that traffic congestion will cost Malta €770 million in 2025, rising to €917 million by 2030, with public transport users losing an additional 2.5 million hours per year to delays on top of the 8.5 million hours that drivers lose. Eighty-four percent of road traffic comes from private vehicles, and buses are stuck in the same congestion. By the government's own analysis the system is inefficient on the load-bearing dimension that determines whether residents choose to use it — journey-time competitiveness against the private car.