The number, tabled in parliament, is the highest daily average since 2019 — which is to say, since before the pandemic emptied the roads and then refilled them with private cars. Free public transport, introduced in 2022, is the policy most often credited for the sustained climb, though the figures alone cannot separate that cause from population growth, fuel costs, or the simple arithmetic of more buses running more routes.
What the number does establish is that a policy decision taken four years ago — to remove the fare entirely — produced a measurable and continuing shift in how people move around the island. Whether the state is getting value for the subsidy it absorbs on every journey is a question the ridership figure alone cannot answer. The cost per passenger, the effect on road congestion, and the carbon displacement are all consequential calculations that a daily average does not supply.
Malta's road network is among the most congested in the European Union by surface area. A sustained rise in bus use is precisely the outcome the free-fare policy was designed to produce. Whether 234,673 daily journeys is enough to matter to that congestion is the question the figure raises without resolving.
Sophia Borg 
Isla Camilleri