Ministry: Arriva not trying to improve

The Transport Ministry has acknowledged that public transport company Arriva is not making an effort to improve the service on problematic routes. But it defended the public transport reform, insisting the controls in place today were not possible under the previous system when bus operators “did what they practically liked”. A spokeswoman said the ministry was aware that the Arriva service was still dogged by punctuality problems on a number of routes. “The ministry is not satisfied that Arriva is doing all that is possible to ensure that reliability and punctuality ratios are within acceptable international standards,” she said. As the ministry reacted to a damning warning letter sent to Arriva by the transport regulator revealed in The Sunday Times, the Opposition said the Government was politically responsible for the “failed reform”. The ministry spokeswoman defended the results of a passenger satisfaction survey recently quoted by Transport Minister Austin Gatt on television that showed 73 per cent of passengers were satisfied with the service. The survey, she added, related to passenger responses for the whole network. The ministry was “very aware” of the great...