It requires an astute degree of incompetence to exquisitely frustrate the mass movement of people.Modern public transportation has this astute incompetence under the stewardship of Minister [of Works and Infrastructure] Suruj Rambachan.That the productive sector is daily delayed by inefficiencies of Government's mass transit bus service illustrates where Government stands on its willingness to facilitate national productivity.
Some years ago, the Government introduced scores of articulated mass transit buses. These can transport 120+ people in one go. A hundred of them, deployed in sync with peak transport hours, would easily move 12,000 people. At a minimum of $6 per passenger, the State could earn a minimum of $72,000 in one run.
But these buses mostly park idle at bus stations during peak morning and evening travel hours when they are needed by the public. To diversify the economy away from the energy sector does require efficient land transport of human cargo.
The new school term just started, adding hundreds of thousands of extra clients who need to travel. But public transport managers have not responded to this need. They have neither deployed more buses, nor advertised their services, nor have they thought to increase the frequency of their bus runs or run the buses in sync with peak-hour travel demands. So what is happening is that travellers are moving earlier. They are hoping to beat the transport rush–only to find themselves early to travel, but stranded.
Tardy state bus drivers add to the problem. They impinge on the productive capacity of all other sectors of the country where the physical presence of workers or students is necessary to drive progress.
Each work day, thousands of working people and students stand sweating on the East-West Corridor bus route for waits of 30 minutes to hours, awaiting taxpayer-paid-for buses to transport them to their destinations. Meanwhile, the Government busses Cepep workers around to party rallies and demonstrations as an illusion of public support.
Perhaps it's time that the Government train these Cepep workers to operate and repair the nation's buses as an initiative to curb the State's mass transit inefficiencies. Cepep can supplement PTSC's crop of overworked bus drivers.
The Government flops at running a small mass transit bus network. Is the nation to trust that the Government can run a rapid-rail train service better than it runs the State's basic, inefficient bus transit system? What would the State do differently? Who would the State hire to operate a rapid rail system?Would hundreds of thousands of citizens be moved any more efficiently?
Sarah Parks
via e-mail