MONTEGO BAY, St James — The management of Montego Bay Metro Company Ltd’s ailing fleet of buses is optimistic that help is on the way. The State-run enterprise now relies on six buses to cover its five routes across western Jamaica. Only eight of 15 buses remain in the 25-year-old company’s stable and during a recent interview, two were said to be out for repair.

“The minister of transport would have said that buses will be coming in; 45 diesel buses for JUTC [Jamaica Urban Transit Company, which services the Corporate Area]. We are supposed to get from that amount. We are hoping very soon, in the next financial year, that our fleet will be increased,” said general manager of MoBay Metro Dr Shauna-Gaye Brown.

“We are looking to modernise our maintenance department. We want to give them better resources, diagnostic tools and so on,” she added.

Shoddy roads in some areas, she explained, have had a major impact on the fleet.

An improved maintenance department and the expected improvement in the reliability of buses, she believes, will put the company in a better position to capitalise on opportunities for innovative new initiatives now presenting themselves within the areas MoBay Metro serves.

“I’m seeing a lot of opportunities that we would want to capitalise on. Things that the company has never done before,” said an optimistic Brown who has been in the GM role since January 2022.

“With services moving to Fairview and Bogue [on the outskirts of Montego Bay, commuters] are incurring additional taxi fare. So if we could have additional buses, we would be able to operate a round-the-town shuttle,” she said.

She envisions the shuttle servicing passengers as far away as the Sangster International Airport in addition to facilitating easier movement of commuters in and around the city of Montego Bay. More bus routes are also being considered in other parishes as part of a growth strategy.

“We’re doing the necessary groundwork so that when that time comes, we’ll be able to move right ahead,” Brown said.

Commuters’ expectations have been tempered over the years. Many have come to question the reliability of the service which is plagued by delays. The Montego Bay to Falmouth route has been particularly hard hit. It is down to only one of the five buses needed to effectively provide service.

MoBay Metro’s problems, says former chairman Robert Russell, began years ago.

“What happened to Metro is that we’ve had very old buses that needed replacement. We were given the excuse that we couldn’t buy any new buses because we were in the IMF [International Monetary Fund] deal and we weren’t allowed to spend to buy new buses,” he told the Observer.

Montego Bay Metro was set up in 1997 as a private entity. Its focus was on providing a dedicated school bus service in Montego Bay. In 2000 a municipal bus service was introduced. Russell, who is general manager of Deja Resorts and president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, was chairman from 2016 to 2019.

“A lot of our buses, when I left, they were at end of life. We were patching them up and we kept them on the road, but they weren’t efficient; they were literally outdated,” he lamented.

Like Brown, Russell is convinced the bus company has a lot of untapped potential.

“MoBay Metro can be the hub to move people around. We should be moving the majority of the people on the main thoroughfares to get some of the vehicles off the road and have the taxis from the main town centres into the communities,” he said.

Russell believes taxis and buses both have a role to play but stressed the need for the right type of vehicles to be sourced as additions to MoBay Metro’s fleet.

“We need new buses and then new buses that are conducive to the area that they are running. I think they need a diverse fleet that includes some smaller buses that can go to areas such as Goodwill,” he suggested.

A 50-seater bus, he pointed out, would be less adept at navigating some of the narrow roads in many of western Jamaica’s rural communities.

“A lot of those buses weren’t designed to traverse the terrain that they do. When I used to send a bus up into Goodwill, after a while that bus would have more maintenance challenges than the buses that were doing the Falmouth or the Lucea route. There is definitely a need for the taxi service to work in conjunction with the bus service,” said Russell.

For Brown, she would like to see MoBay Metro given just as much priority as the fleet that serves the Corporate Area.

“There is a lot of focus on the JUTC … Montego Bay is a different place and the same demand is justified here in the second city,” she replied when asked what she believes is the State’s role in ensuring the fleet she manages operates more efficiently.

Brown, like Russell, rejected the suggestion that the lack of an efficient bus service leads to the proliferation of public passenger vehicles and the accompanying indiscipline seen on the roads. She also agreed with him that taxis are an important part of the system. As in other sections of the country, they jostle alongside buses for road space and parking inside often-cramped transportation centres.

“Where we’ve had challenges is we’ve outgrown our transportation centre. I think the lack of an up-to-date or adequate transport centre has contributed greatly to the indiscipline on the road. Taxis stop anywhere, everywhere, they load everywhere and that contributes to the indiscipline and the traffic congestion that we’ve had,” Russell noted.

Some of the blame, he pointed out, rests with passengers who ask cabbies to stop in areas not designated as drop-off points.

For now, both he and Brown are hoping things will get better in the transportation sector — and at MoBay Metro in particular. Among Brown’s list of goals: to attract more commuters. One recent initiative was this January’s launch of a free Wi-Fi service on MoBay Metro buses, along with the FleetFactz tracking app that helps waiting commuters keep track of buses as they travel along the routes. These are part of the overall plan, she said, to bring MoBay Metro in line with higher standards seen in other parts of the world.

The passion to provide the best service possible to commuters is what fuels her.

“We would want to thank them, thank them for choosing Montego Bay Metro for the past 25 years, they remain our drive to serve,” she said.

“It gives us a drive, that zeal to continue to go beyond the call of duty to meet their expectations.”