Looking back to 2010 and the variety of vehicles in public service in Malta. No two buses were the same; now they all look alike and uniform with nothing to distinguish one from another. I was lucky, as a tourist and bus enthusiast, to get to see these fabulous vehicles out on Maltas’ roads.
11 comments
Loved the old Bedfords!
“move beck please”
They might have been fun for a tourist, but not when you had to use them every day.
I loved the old busses so much. Yeah the seats would be at hot as the surface of the sun during the summer and it had no ac but they were cool
I used to love the bell you’d need to pull a nylon rope to ring 🙂
They were cool. It was a bit like Havana with their old vechicles from the 1950’s! I know that the pollution from them wasn’t so great though. I’m surprised they haven’t been put in a museum.
They were beautiful back then.
Honestly I loved our public transport in those days. I used to go around everywhere with them and knew almost all the route numbers by heart. The drivers made me laugh too. I think it was 11 or 15c a trip at that time.
I can smell the diesel just by looking at this photo
Well sorry dude, Malta is not your personal disneyland
It was great if you are tourist for a week.
We tried to use them with the pushchair :))
And the last straw was a bunch of cockroaches run away from inside the seat as soon as you put your ass on it. We bought the car next week after.
I don’t use public transport often, but today it was this “special occasion” day — see it online, choose the route, pay contactless, take a seat and enjoy the view. Nothing comparing with this yellow old scrap.
I’ve always found the subject of buses in Malta is very much like Marmite – people either love them or hate them. Like I said in a previous comment, the Maltese deserved a transport system for all, as they have now. But a major attraction in Malta was the old buses, with even those who have no interest in them missing the experience – a tourist draw.
A compromise could have been made – as most journeys were operating every 10 minutes, a “traditional” bus could have been transferred from Heritage Malta to Arriva Malta so that this tourist market could have been kept, running a traditional every half hour during the day on the main tourist routes.
Thankfully, there are some traditional buses, primarily aimed at the tourist market, still operating in service and for hire, most, if not all, converted to run on compressed natural gas (CNG), much cleaner than the original diesel engines.
To those who miss them, it was a great time with many characters. To those that don’t miss them, you have a modern, air conditioned fleet of buses which are accessible to all.