That which comes or never gets here
Dept. of Transportation examines variants for citizen transport
By Aurelio Pedroso
One in every five residents in the Cuban capital gets to board a bus in the hours of greatest demand. The other four remain on the bus stop under danger of a nervous breakdown or worse –absorbed by a perilous sense of indifference mixed with a dose of resignation that causes an effect worthy of a highly qualified multidisciplinary commission.
Cubans in their thirties have never known a harmonious and reliable system for traveling by bus in a city as big as Havana, with more than 2 million inhabitants. Those who lived in the 60s will remember how they used to reach their meeting places on time and with their clothes still ironed. Those are times gone by that will not return for the time being.
We have seen a project by the provincial division of the Ministry of Transportation (MITRANS) that examines different variants to ease the tense –even chaotic—situation of this sector.
According to the study, there is an estimate that at present the flow of passengers is 110,000 per hour, and that could be expanded to 150,000 if certain modifications were applied. The estimate for the morning rush hours is of 600,000.
It is precisely one of the most touching moments to see the faces of the people when one passes a bus stop. In their look is reflected a morning anguish as they await their arrival at their work or educational centers, or even to a hospital, to cite but three places, for not anyone can afford a private taxi or is lucky enough to hitch a ride, because of gender, for women usually are more successful than men when they take this route.
“If I take a taxi both ways I would have to work just to pay the 10 pesos taxi, and in the end my salary would not be enough to cover the whole month,” a young woman told me once.
The plan studies some novel ideas and others not so much, for they were used previously, such as overlapping the “in” and “out” hours at educational and working centers in three different timetables: 7:30, 8:00 and 8:30 in the morning and an equivalent one for the exit in the afternoon.
First: The city needs between 2,500 and 3,000 buses at a cost of $180 million, some $25 million for operational costs, and 50,000 tons of fuel a year.
The study has found that “this solution is not feasible in the present conditions.”
The second: Applying “priority measures” and “organizational actions of operations” that would increase between 5% and 50% the transportation level during the busiest hours.
Among these measures are street repairs, parking limits, and even streets for exclusive use of buses with controlled circulation and stops with special conditions. Other suggestions include short runs, “super-express” services and others.
The study deems these solutions as “partially feasible in the present conditions”.
And thirdly: “Decrease the demand of transportation in the busiest hours.” For that end, there would be an overlapping of the timetables of educational and working centers, beginning at 7:30 a.m. or earlier, and then after 9:00.
The advantages and disadvantages of such measure are under discussion, although the project says that “it is totally feasible at present”, for it would take the same number of buses used now (a figure is not mentioned) and more fuel.
The changes will be introduced carefully and progressively in nine zones of the Cuban capital.
According to the document, changes and variants were already explained to “representatives of the main sectors involved,” and at present there is discussion about “quantification of the working and student population involved in the nine pilot zones in order to evaluate the desired effect with the implementation of the proposal.”
This is about mitigating the problem with the same resources and better organization, among other considerations, because the country does not have enough funds to buy all the necessary buses. At the same time, it reinforces the participation of the private sector in transportation. Perhaps in a not very distant future cooperatives will appear as another variant.
In the meantime, people will continue waiting –not only for buses—remembering that old Russian (not Soviet) saying that lay the responsibility for the invention of the airplane on optimists, while pessimists invented the parachute.
