Pay Maltese €2.50 to Ride the Bus? Inside the Radical Plan to End Gridlock

Pay People €2.50 Every Time They Use the Bus? A Bold Plan to Get Malta Moving Again
By Hot Malta | Published 09:45 CEST, 23 May 2024

Strolling past the crumbling limestone facades of Strait Street on a May morning, you can almost taste the diesel in the air: delivery vans double-parked outside cafés, ride-shares idling, and a lone bendy-bus edging through the chaos like a reluctant accordion. Yet inside Parliament, Opposition transport spokesperson Karol Aquilina has just tabled a proposal that could turn every one of those exhaust pipes into a tiny cash machine. His idea: pay commuters €2.50 every single time they tap on a Malta Public Transport bus.

Yes, pay them. Not subsidise the fare, not give a tax rebate at the end of the year, but literally top up the Tallinja card with an instant €2.50 “mobility dividend”. The logic is as Maltese as hobż biż-żejt: if the island can shell out €58 million a year in fuel subsidies and €20 million to keep two ferry operators afloat, why not cut out the middleman and reward citizens for leaving the car at home?

Reaction has been swift and deliciously overheated. Facebook groups lit up overnight. “€2.50 to squeeze next to someone’s shopping bags on the X2? Count me in,” joked one Sliema resident. Others see darker motives: “Typical pre-election bribery,” sniffed a Gozitan farmer who drives 50 km daily. The memes practically wrote themselves—images of octogenarians tap-dancing onto the 198 to Marsa just to collect their daily stipend.

But beneath the banter lies a very Maltese dilemma. We are Europe’s most car-dependent country bar Cyprus. Our grandparents walked to Valletta from Birkirkara; their grandchildren now burn 30 minutes circling Floriana for parking. Roads widen, tunnels multiply, yet congestion remains a national sport. CO₂ emissions from transport have risen 146 % since 2005, wiping out gains made by the new power station.

Aquilina’s proposal flips the script. Instead of punishing drivers with higher taxes, it bribes the rest of us to behave differently. The €2.50 figure is not random. Government data shows the average car trip costs a Maltese household around €3.20 in fuel, maintenance, and time lost. Undercut that by 70 cents and, in theory, even the staunchest petrolhead starts doing the maths.

PwC Malta ran a back-of-envelope model: if just 12 % of daily car journeys switched to buses, the scheme would pay for itself through reduced road maintenance, lower healthcare costs from pollution, and extra productivity. “It’s the opposite of a congestion charge,” explains economist Stephanie Fabri. “We monetise the benefit society gains when you don’t drive.”

Can it actually work here?

Culturally, the idea piggybacks on two Maltese traits: love of a bargain and love of neighbourly one-upmanship. Imagine the village core gossip: “Did you see Ġużeppi? He’s earning €25 a week just riding the bus to the football club!” That social proof matters more in Malta than glossy EU posters.

Logistically, the island is custom-built for such an experiment. No journey from Mellieħa to Marsaxlokk takes more than 75 minutes; our diminutive size means even a modest modal shift yields visible change. The Tallinja card system already tracks every boarding; topping it up in real time is a software tweak, not a civil-service epic.

Yet pitfalls lurk. Past free-travel schemes—like the 2022 summer pilot for 18-year-olds—saw buses swell to bursting without extra drivers. Operators warn they would need 120 additional buses and 200 drivers before offering “cash-back” incentives. Then there’s the Gozo question: would the subsidy apply on the ferry-bus combo? And the perennial fear: higher demand could simply push more tourists onto already strained routes.

Transport Minister Aaron Farrugia has so far responded with the political equivalent of a shrug emoji: “We’re studying all options.” But pressure is mounting. The European Commission has threatened to haul Malta to court over air-quality breaches. Eurostat ranks us last in the EU for sustainable transport uptake. If ever there was a moment to try something audaciously Maltese—part carrot, part carnival—it is now.

Conclusion: Paying commuters €2.50 per ride sounds like clickbait policy. Yet in a country where the average family owns 1.8 cars and the air tastes of burnt clutch, it may be the kind of disruptive bribe we actually need. The question is no longer whether we can afford to reward people for taking the bus, but whether we can afford not to.