EUR 100m a year for free buses

TL;DR

On 26 February 2026 The Shift News (Ivan Camilleri) headlined an article “‘Free’ public transport reaches €100 million a year in subsidies as traffic gridlock worsens”. Its first sentence says that Malta’s “‘free’ public transport system cost taxpayers almost €100 million in 2025, according to figures tabled in Parliament” [1]. The speaker is the newspaper, so its article is the wording we test. We checked the money, the congestion claim and the link the article draws between them.

1. The headline rounds up its own figures. The article gives three 2025 payments: €59 million, €31.2 million and €3.2 million [1]. They sum to €93.4 million, 6.6% under €100 million, and €3.2 million of it is for buying buses. The body says “almost”; the headline says “reaches”.
2. We could not read the parliamentary reply behind the money. The figures come from replies by the Transport Minister to the PN’s Chris Said. Newsbook reports the same document in Maltese [2 ◆]. The reply itself, the Financial Estimates and the operator’s accounts were not available to us, so every euro figure is second-hand ◆.
3. Congestion is up a little; the evidence for “gridlock” is thin. TomTom’s index puts the Valletta area’s congestion level at 50.3% in 2025, 1.1 points above 2024, with mean speed down 0.5 km/h [5]. Eurostat counts 1.6% more passenger cars in 2025 and 5.8% more than in 2022, but cars per 1,000 residents fell from 610 to 585 [3, 4].
4. The article’s link between the two is not tested. Nothing in the data we could read shows what congestion would have been without free buses. The comparison is a juxtaposition, not a finding.

1. Supported
2. Largely supported
3. Not substantiated
4. Misleading
5. Contradicted

1 The claim and what we could verify

The claim record summarised the article as “‘free’ public transport now costs about EUR 100 million a year in subsidies while traffic gridlock worsens”. We rate the article’s own words. Quoted words below are the Shift’s, as printed; the Shift’s account of the Minister’s replies is the Shift’s paraphrase and is not in quotation marks.

2 Method

Questions. (A) Is the 2025 figure close to €100 million? (B) Has the payment risen year on year since free travel began? (C) Is traffic congestion worsening? (D) Have car numbers and car use gone on increasing? (E) Does the data show that the spending has failed to ease congestion, as the article’s framing implies?

Evidence. For A and B we added the components the Shift reports and compared them with the earlier payments reported by Business Now and the Shift (calc.py; data/cc-071/checks.csv, subsidy_series.csv). For C we read TomTom’s annual congestion level for the Valletta metro area. For D we took Eurostat’s count of passenger cars and the population on 1 January, and computed cars per 1,000 residents with both on the same year (Eurostat’s own rate uses the next 1 January; ours is like for like across years).

Limits. The euro figures rest on outlet reports of a document we did not read. TomTom’s index measures one metropolitan area, in two years that we could read, and is a commercial product; its “congestion level” is the extra travel time against free-flow conditions. Eurostat counts the stock of cars, not how much they are driven.

Grades. Eurostat counts are grade C (official statistics); TomTom is grade C (a documented commercial dataset, not audited); outlet reports of tabled figures are grade D. Verdicts follow Appendix A.

3 What the evidence shows

The money. The article’s three 2025 payments sum to €93.4 million (59.0 + 31.2 + 3.2). Operating payments alone, the concession fee and the Tallinja card, come to €90.2 million; the €3.2 million for buses is investment. The sum is 6.6% under €100 million and 11.2% above the €84 million the article gives for 2024 (calc.py). The earlier payments reported by Business Now were €36.3 million (2021), €42.8 million (2022) and €69.4 million (2023). If those series are on the same basis, payments have risen every year, and the 2025 sum is 34.6% above 2023. They may not be on the same basis: the 2023 figure is described as payments to the operator, the 2025 total as subsidies. The Shift’s “highest annual subsidy yet” is consistent with these numbers ◆.

Congestion. TomTom’s index for the Valletta metro area gives an annual average congestion level of 50.3% in 2025 against 49.2% in 2024, a rise of 1.1 percentage points, with mean speed of 27.6 km/h against 28.1 km/h [5]. That is a small, one-year rise in a single area. We read only those two years on TomTom’s page, so we cannot say whether it extends a longer trend. The article itself gives no congestion figure; its basis is “transport experts” and the rise in car numbers.

Cars. Eurostat counts 335,693 passenger cars at the end of 2025, 1.6% more than a year earlier and 5.8% more than at the end of 2022, the year free travel began [3]. Over 2019–2022 the stock grew 3.3% in three years. Population grew faster, by 10.4% from 1 January 2022 to 1 January 2025 [4], so cars per 1,000 residents fell from 610 to 585 on our like-for-like ratio. More cars on the roads, yes; more cars per person, no. Eurostat does not measure vehicle-kilometres, so “private car use” is not something we could test.

4 Where the evidence points different ways

5 Testing the claim

6 Verdict and requests for evidence

Why. (1) The headline figure is stronger than the components under it, and the body’s “almost” is the more defensible wording. (2) Every euro figure rests on outlet reports of tabled replies, which we could not check at source. (3) Cars and one congestion index have edged up, but population grew faster, and the data in hand contain no counterfactual for the implied failure of the scheme. The rating applies to the claim as worded, which joins a spending figure to a trend in a single headline. It says nothing about the journalists’ motives, and the direction of the payments, upward each year, is consistent with every source we read. Confidence is low because the central figure is second-hand.

Evidence we are asking for

• From the Ministry (or Parliament): the text of the replies to Chris Said’s questions on payments to Malta Public Transport for 2024 and 2025, itemised.
• From the Ministry for Finance: the 2025 outturn and 2026 estimate for the public service obligation and free-travel lines.
• From Malta Public Transport or Transport Malta: payments received by year, with passenger numbers, on one consistent basis.
• From Transport Malta: vehicle-kilometre or traffic-count series for 2019–2025 on the main corridors.

7 Limitations

• The 2025 and 2024 payments, and the 2021–2023 series, are known only through the Shift, Newsbook and Business Now ◆. We did not read any parliamentary reply, budget document or account.
• The series in Figure 1 may mix bases (payments to the operator against subsidies as the Shift defines them). We did not verify what the Minister’s reply counts as a subsidy.
• TomTom’s index is for the Valletta metro area, not for Malta as a whole; we read its 2025 and previous-year values only. Sources conflict on earlier years in search summaries, which we do not use.
• Eurostat’s car count is a stock at 31 December; it does not measure how far cars are driven, so “car use” is untested. The 2025 values are the latest Eurostat release (6 Oct 2026) and may be revised.
• The Shift says there were 542,000 valid Tallinja cards “by the end of 2024” in 2026, and its 10 Feb 2024 article gave the same number for the end of the year before. We did not rate this.
• Newsbook’s figure of 35 vehicles a day (all vehicle types) was not tested; our passenger-car figure is 14 a day net in 2025.
• We rate the Shift’s wording. We did not rate its statements that few Maltese nationals are believed to use the buses or that experts questioned value for money.

References

1. [1] Camilleri I. (26 Feb 2026). ‘Free’ public transport reaches €100 million a year in subsidies as traffic gridlock worsens. The Shift News. https://theshiftnews.com/2026/02/26/free-public-transport-reaches-e100-million-a-year-in-subsidies-as-traffic-gridlock-worsens/
2. [2] Mamo C. (27 Feb 2026). Nefqa ta’ €100 miljun fis-sena għal trasport pubbliku b’xejn. Newsbook ◆ (outlet’s report of the parliamentary reply). https://newsbook.com.mt/nefqa-ta-e100-miljun-fis-sena-ghal-trasport-pubbliku-bxejn/
3. [3] Eurostat. Passenger cars, by type of motor energy and size of engine (road_eqs_carmot), Malta, total. Retrieved 10 Oct 2026. https://doi.org/10.2908/ROAD_EQS_CARMOT
4. [4] Eurostat. Population change – demographic balance and crude rates at national level (demo_gind), Malta, population on 1 January. Retrieved 10 Oct 2026. https://doi.org/10.2908/DEMO_GIND
5. [5] TomTom. Traffic Index: Valletta traffic report, annual congestion level and mean speed, Valletta metro area. Read 10 Oct 2026. https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/city/valletta/
6. [6] Fenech R. (18 Apr 2024). Government shells out close to €70 million to national bus operator Malta Public Transport in 2023. Business Now ◆. https://businessnow.mt/government-shells-out-close-to-e70-million-to-national-bus-operator-malta-public-transport-in-2023/
7. [7] The Shift Team (10 Feb 2024). Tal-linja costing taxpayers €250 each in subsidies. The Shift News. https://theshiftnews.com/2024/02/10/tal-linja-costing-taxpayers-e250-each-in-subsidies/
8. [8] Miżien. Calculation script and outputs: tools/cc-071-report/calc.py; data/cc-071/checks.csv, subsidy_series.csv, cars_population.csv, tomtom_valletta.csv.

Appendix A: series standards and verdict scale

Every investigation in this series follows the same rules so that verdicts are comparable and challengeable.

Confidence

High: multiple independent lines of evidence agree. Moderate: evidence is relevant but incomplete or indirect. Low: evidence is thin, second-hand or conflicting.

Evidence grades

A experiment · B observational study with a control or gradient · C review, guidance, statute text or official statistics · D assertion or anecdote. ◆ marks a source known only second-hand.

Standards

• Quote the speaker, not the headline, with outlet and date, and link the original where possible.
• Separate the claim from the evidence offered for it, and say who made which statement.
• Grade the evidence and show differing views side by side where the evidence is unsettled.
• State what we could not access or verify, and what would change the verdict either way.
• Ask for the missing evidence in specific, answerable requests.
• Offer a right of reply where a check finds a claim Not substantiated, Misleading or Contradicted (or a pledge Not measurable, Off track or Missed), before wider circulation, and append responses.
• Correct errors openly with a version number and change log.
• Whistle-blow only on evidence: a verdict of Misleading or Contradicted requires documents or data that can be shown, not inference.
• Check every side. Government, opposition, NGOs and developers are held to the same standard.

Appendix B: revision log