Not only are the authorities off to a bungling start in their latest effort at reforming Kingston's bus system, but they appear en route to reintroducing many of the worse elements of what existed up to late in the last decade.

This is not to suggest that what we have now is pristine, or even good, although there is a fair level of organisation and scheduling predictability by the Government-owned Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) which, admittedly, is a drain on the national budget.

It is, however, hard to speak kindly about the buses that operate under of the umbrella of the National Transport Co-operative Society (NTCS), of which Ezroy Millwood is the president of long-standing. The NTCS supplements or operate on routes not run by the JUTC.

Dangerous for others

Mr Millwood's organisation has not been good at its job, at least in how the buses at its command operate on their routes. Their crews are mostly unkempt, undisciplined and crass. The police and the Transport Authority, for instance, have recently been exercised by the lewdness entertained on the NTCS buses. Moreover, they race to bus stops, jostle for passengers and, generally, are dangerous to other road users.

But it used to be worse when the NTCS had greater control over the capital's bus routes until its franchises were revoked at the start of the decade and the routes awarded to the JUTC, on account of which the Privy Council recently awarded the NTCS over $1.5 billion.

Some months ago, the transport ministry and the Transport Authority announced that the NTCS's franchises would not be renewed when they expired on December 2. New arrangements would be made.

More recently, the Transport Authority invited applications for 164 subfranchise licences. It received 295, of which only 38, or approximately 13 per cent, met all the criteria. Most of the applications were late, coming mostly on the eve of the proposed date for the transition. The Government has been humbled into asking the NTCS to continue for now.

The transport ministry has blamed indiscipline on the part of the applicants for this debacle, but has eased the documentation required, such as character references and accident reports, for those who would operate our bus routes.

Embarrassing last-minute scramble

While the would-be franchises may have inadequately complied with the application process, we would insist that greater fault for the uncertainty hovering over the city's bus service is inept management at the transport ministry and the Transport Authority. They ought to have anticipated the weaknesses of the potential licensees and should have been working with them earlier to overcome their shortcomings. In the end, there was an embarrassing last-minute scramble.

But we have a deeper concern. It appears that what is now conceived will lead to a return to the pre-NTCS days of individual bus-owners and drivers, with no, or little overarching system of accountability. Kingston's bus system was a free-for-all and the ride akin to what we assume would have been the Middle Passage experience.

The NTCS was/is bad, but it represented a modicum of central authority and a little order. The Transport Authority is yet to explain how it hopes to achieve this with the new subfranchises.

Commuters have cause to worry.

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