National Transport route shut down after one day…

In October of last year the Department of Transport introduced new regulations which they claimed would better manage the entire bus transport industry. Well, more than six months later there is still conflict within the industry. The latest storm brewing is between the Transport Board and National Transport Limited—the restructured bus company owned by the Novelo brothers. This time the disagreement involves a newly introduced premier bus run that commenced on Wednesday, June twenty-fourth but discontinued the following day. The controversial run was sidelined at the mile four checkpoint on the Western Highway where police and Transport Officers stopped the bus, had all passengers disembark, and escorted the bus back to the terminal. According to National Transport’s Operations Manager, Philip Jones, the company added the special run well within the time block assigned by their permit, in order to meet the requests of customers, and to give travelers an option.

Philip Jones, Operations Mgr, Nat’l Transport
“We have a block that was issued by the Department of Transport. It starts from five in the morning until twelve from Belize City to Benque, seven days a week. The Transport Board has informed us that we can put additional bus where it’s necessary within our block being that there’s an overcrowded time slot which will be an hour, an hour and a half, we can put in as much bus as we possibly can to alleviate the overcrowding and congestion of that particular run. The bus is a luxury coach, it’s air-conditioned, it has a bathroom, it has kitchen onboard, it has about four TV’s on board so it’s a different option from the regular coaches that you’re used to right. What happen is we have a lotta requests from customers being that Belmopan—all the government office they are there so we have majority of the workers are from Belmopan and they have been requesting this service now for months. We have a seven o’clock regular and we have a seven fifteen James that goes to Dangriga, which is a non-stop bus—it’s not an express it’s a non-stop bus—and when that reach in Belmopan it reach late because it takes about an hour. So you would reach Belmopan about eight fifteen, eight twenty. This bus is an express service. When you leave the terminal you stop nowhere else, it’s direct to Belmopan and it takes about forty-five to fifty minutes which reach you in Belmopan about quarter to eight or ten to eight so you have sufficient time to reach work.”