Transport Malta has officially applied to trademark the name ‘Metro Malta’ with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, transport minister Ian Borg will reveal tonight on TVM’s Dissett.

The application comes after Prime Minister Joseph Muscat confirmed that a number of studies were being done to see whether a metro would be feasible in Malta.

Joseph Muscat has also said it was “no secret” that the government was looking at the possibility of introducing a metro system for the entire archipelago.

The government however could not expect the public to tolerate the poor quality road infrastructure for years to come while the lengthy studies on such an underground system were conducted. “Imagine, we have been working on studies related to the permanent link to Gozo for five years. A metro system would take a quarter century and we cannot drag our feet on upgrading the country’s infrastructure till then,” he said.

Muscat said that for such a metro system to be viable in Gozo, the island’s population would have to grow significantly. “So we need to ask ourselves – Do we want more building on Gozo to facilitate this population growth?” Muscat said, adding that studies on the Malta-Gozo vehicular traffic link on the other hand, had shown this was economically viable.