Transportation in Malta

Transport in Malta You can find my experience and suggestions on the subject in this article. I went to Malta for two days at the weekend in November. Due to the short duration, I only visited the highlights on the main island. The content of this article is the transportation on the main island.

Transport Options in Malta

Before coming to Malta, there are 3 options for transportation within Malta:

1. Public transport
2. Rent a car
3. Hop-on Hop-off

In this article, you can find my suggestions about which transportation alternatives to choose and why in Malta.

In this article, there is no information about the transition to the islands.

Public Transport in Malta

First of all, I have to say that I preferred public transport for my trip to Malta. In all the sources I read, it was written that there is a wide bus network in Malta and that I can reach everywhere I want to see by bus. If you say was it really like that, yes. The transportation network is extensive, there are buses until late at night. Night buses start with N and are more expensive than day buses.

The bus service in Malta is called Tallinja, it also has an app. Using the application, you can easily find the lines to the places you want to go.

When you get on the bus, you can buy a ticket directly from the driver, the price goes up to 1.5 euros and 2 euros in summer.

If you have to take the bus many times in a short time like us, there are cards with 12 or 21 tickets for transportation in Malta. We preferred the 12 pieces, the price was 15 euros. If you take the buses one after the other, your ticket rights do not expire, I could not find it written anywhere, but I think if you get on the bus again within 1-2 hours, it counts as a transfer.

It is useful to be careful about one thing, and that is that the buses do not leave on time, as you are used to in Europe. If you plan according to the bus time, it can put you in a difficult situation.

There was also a situation that I had not experienced anywhere before. If the bus is full, it does not stop at the stop, or even if it does, it picks up as many passengers as it has dropped. In other words, if 2 people got off the full bus, the driver only gets 2 new people. If there are 10 people waiting, the other 8 are waiting for the next bus.

Another issue is that the streets on the island of Malta are very narrow. There are streets that buses cannot pass when they come face to face with a vehicle. If you're on a fast bus in these streets, it's not much fun. You are frequently exposed to sudden braking.

The buses are city buses, but they travel between cities on the island. However, in many cities, they enter the city center and take passengers. The bus goes in so that the passengers do not walk the 200-meter distance, and returns on the same road. This also extends the bus service time. It causes an increase in traffic congestion in the city.

The X4 bus from Valletta to the airport may not run on Sundays. If it is not available, it is also possible to take one of the lines 71-72-73 and get off close to the airport and reach the airport.

Don't forget that you will use the one opposite the bus stop as the traffic flows in the opposite direction to us 🙂 You may be confused. There is a list of the buses passing through that stop at the whole stop and the information in which direction they are going, you can check it from there.

Car Rental in Malta

Before coming to Malta, I read that renting a car in Malta is very cheap. When we landed at the airport, we saw 9euro car rental ads per day.

The reasons why we rent a car in Malta;

• We were afraid of having difficulties while driving because the traffic flowed in the opposite direction to ours.

• We have read that the traffic is very busy and congested, we are already tired of the traffic in Istanbul and we did not want to drive in the traffic there.

• Parking is a problem with traffic.

If the car rental is as cheap as stated, it can actually be visited by car in low season. Since the time we went (November 2017) coincided with the time when the sea vacationers left the island, although traffic jams from time to time, it was not like in the summer.

Hop-on Hop-of in Malta

Hop-on Hop-of is another way to travel in Malta. Well-known hop-on hop-off companies are also present in Malta and they pass through all the tourist lines on the island. You can visit the island in this way by purchasing a daily or two-day ticket.

If you say why you did not choose; Since our time was limited, we aimed to reach the points we determined quickly, but hop-on hop-off has a route and it goes to all touristic points by acting accordingly. We preferred to travel by bus as this would waste our time.

As soon as we could find the speed we wanted with the bus, we had to run quite a bit to match the bus times.