New bus routes announced
There has been an ongoing bus war in the transportation industry for some time. It is a fight between big operators, small operators and one that has turned political and ugly. It escalated this week when it became known that there was an intention to zone bus routes. This afternoon, the Ministry of Transport introduced a new schedule which they claim will bring regulation to the routes. The schedules are based on the concept of zoning. At a news conference at the Raccoon Street Police Station which attracted bus owners, Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry, Colonel George Lovell explained that so far, only permits for the Southern and Western routes have been approved. Permits for the northern routes will be dealt with next Wednesday. Those who have received permits are expected to start implementing their bus runs on October nineteenth and the Department will start enforcing the new schedules at the end of the month. While the schedules provide for extended bus runs throughout the country almost on a twenty-four hour basis, there are some changes which will have commuters switch buses in mid journey.
Col. George Lovell, C.E.O, Ministry of Transport
“If you are going, for example, in the zoning what will happen is if you have the southern zone, people coming from Punta Gorda, their last change will probably be in Belmopan and the reason for that is when you go from the Belmopan terminal coming to Belize City, the Punta Gorda Transports will not be—it will be like an express—will not be allowed to stop and drop off nor pick up people on that stretch from Belmopan to Belize City. Their next stop will be at the terminal in Belize City. Then people going southbound—that’s people from the north going south—people going southbound, if you’re going to Dangriga and you are on a Novelo’s Bus, you will have to—in Belmopan—and that is the current practice anyway, that bus is not going to Dangriga. You will have to change bus there and then go down to Dangriga or Punta Gorda. But those people who would normally take Novelo’s or any western route buses to go down to Dangriga, that’s what they do anyway. So then there will have to be, and we have identified this, there will have to be a degree of adjustment in terms of commuters who are accustomed to jump on one bus and go from one point to the next.”
And while passengers will have to adjust to the changes, those at the helm say that because the new schedules will result in heavier traffic, there will have to be strict enforcement by bus operators and motorists. And this, they say, should result in a smoother and safer public transportation system with more bus operators benefitting from the changes.
Col. George Lovell, C.E.O, Ministry of Transport
“If a vehicle does not meet the standards or a bus, it will not be allowed to from the terminal. If there is something that happened on the highway in terms of over crowdedness, you cant ,sit because of the un-comfortableness and that sort of thing, those things will be monitored and enforced by the traffic department or the transport department while on the highway.”
A.S.P. Francis Williams, Head of Traffic
“And we will bring in the Transport Department and be enforcing laws along the highway for this period and continuously to do it.”
Col. George Lovell
“Most importantly is that all these approved schedules will be posted in most public areas, or all known public areas that we have so that people can understand when a particular run will go from a particular location. There is no secret in this whole application and we ill try to make it as open as possible and as available as possible so that people can know exactly which run is scheduled and from where you can catch your bus.”
John Briggs, Chief Transport Officer
“The zoning concept comes in, the buses travelling to the south will be nonstop from the Belize City terminal to the Belmopan terminal. If you notice the times, they actually are not leaving at the same time. There is a time differential; fifteen minutes. The concept is that the bus schedules are not opening on any route is every thirty minutes. On the southern route down to Punta Gorda, that’s gonna be every hour basically. When the bus is leaving Belmopan going west and south, the one to the south will not stop between Belize City and Belmopan. Its first stop will be the terminal in Belmopan. We have a number of the bus operators have already indicated that they prefer not to stop but also remember there’s a time difference. They are expected to reach there. They have an hour and fifteen minutes leaving Belize City, to leaving Belmopan whereas the western route bus which picks up on the way has a longer period of time between leaving Belize City and leaving Belmopan. So we do have that monitoring potential for the time the bus arrives in Belmopan is it’s the southern bus and it arrives there an hour and a half after leaving Belize City well, something happened along the way. They will put in a sign that says non-stop. We need to clarify what express you would prefer to use for coach, air conditioned busses. That terminology we prefer to use coach air conditioned right, to differentiate.”
