Transportation, making the best of it.

 

When we decided to move to Malta, for all the obvious reasons, there was one that we truly didn’t appreciate until we moved here. Living in the ‘burbs in Washington, outside of Seattle, a car was truly mandatory. Without one, getting around was not very doable. My friends living in Seattle gave up their cars, and never looked back. For them, buses are abundant. For picking up large quantities of purchases, there was always Uber or hourly vehicle rental. They literally saved thousands of dollars a year in maintenance, license and registration fees, parking costs, insurance and gasoline. It’s like getting a raise, after you retired.

We researched and believe that we can live almost exclusively on foot and by bus. E-cabs are available for runs to the airport, as well as spots where bus service was poorly served or non-existent. Malta has some seriously good bus service. Just takes a little bit of planning. All our travels around Malta start here:

All roads in Malta start from here.

Until 2011, this was the “standard” bus service on Malta. Mostly second-hand from London, they provided bus service, mostly as a tourist attraction. Finally, they were replaced by a fleet of new buses. While buses are always filled, and often pass bus stops because they are filled, you will not find any articulated buses here. The new buses are barely able to fit on the existing roads.

And we read about the many pitfalls of driving in Malta. When we got here, we took several looks, and said no way to driving. Virtually no road is straight for longer than 50 meters. The condition of many roads here are not to believed. And Seattle thought it has a pothole problem. The streets here can swallow up cars. For another, the roads are very narrow. For those that know their Maltese history, the thousands of years of their development did not allow for tearing down whole towns and starting over. Too many historic sites. Considering that streets were built to carry carts, not motor vehicles, the roads are generally very narrow. The concept of front lawns is non-existent. Buildings are built right up to the street. In some cases, they must pull over, if there is space to do so, and allow opposite direction traffic to go through first. That’s why you see so many very small cars here. And it is why many of the cars have dents and long scrapes on the passenger side of the vehicles. Oh, and the steering is on the right side. However, the Maltese take all this in stride, and drive very fast anyway. 

We made the right decision in not wanting to get in the driver’s seat again. We became full-time pedestrians. It has its challenges, too. Those very same narrow streets that we walk in every day are the same ones that the vehicles occupy. As a result, many streets have inadequate or no sidewalks. So, we often share the space with the speeding vehicles, that show no inclination of sharing the roads with us. And whatever you do while visiting Malta, do NOT forget rule #1. When crossing the street, first always look to your right. If you don’t observe this rule, other rules are irrelevant!