By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

THE Christie administration has identified a new route to be utilised in its unified bus system, with officials “hopeful” that a prototype for the project will be rolled out soon.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Aviation Lorraine Armbrister told The Tribune that the new route, #17, has been “gazetted” by the government, and that the Ministry of Works has begun preparing the necessary road markings and signage for the new bus stops for the new route.

However, Mrs Armbrister indicated that the issue of when the pilot project will be implemented depends on how soon the government, in conjunction with industry representatives can “fine tune” the final details of the project, meaning which buses and bus drivers will participate in the pilot project, and then relay that information back to the ministry.

Mrs Armbrister also said the ministry has sent out requests for proposals (RFPs) to five firms for the provision of “oversight” of the unified bus system, and are now in the process of analysing the “responses of the two firms that indicated a desire to participate.”

In October 2016, Transport and Aviation Minister Glenys Hanna Martin said the Christie administration was “hoping” to roll out a prototype for a unified bus system by year’s end 2016, adding at the time that her announcement was the closest the government has got in its decade-long search for jitney industry reform.

She said at the time that the pilot project would “have all of the features or as many of the features” as the government would like it to have, including schedules, fare boxes, established signage for bus stops, and uniformed, salaried bus drivers.

Yesterday, Mrs Armbrister also mentioned the potential use of a “card” that would be used by bus passengers in basically the same way transit passes are used in the US.

“We’re in the process of fine tuning all of the arrangements for the unified systems,” Mrs Ambrister said when contacted. “The new route, #17 has been gazetted. And everything has been moving very smoothly. So we anticipate that we’ll be in a position in due course to roll out the pilot project which will actually be the forerunner to the unified system.”

Mrs Armbrister, as well as Road Traffic Controller Ross Smith, told The Tribune that the new route has been “tweaked” since its gazetting, and as such the specifics of said route remains unclear.

Nonetheless, when asked when the government plans to roll out the pilot project, which she said will last for six months when implemented, Mrs Armbrister said: “That depends on how soon we can fine tune these last details. (Officials) have to decide on the owners who will be utilised, the bus drivers, which buses will be used and then they come back to us. So this is a process involving both the government and the omnibus organisations.

“So it’s not something the government is doing on its own. It’s something in which the owners are participating and allowing us to see how the process will roll out and evolve so that we can work out all the kinks so that we can eventually move into a unified system that will be for the betterment of the whole island of New Providence.”

She added: “Certainly we’re hopeful it will be rolled out as soon as possible. This has been quite a lengthy process and we’re just at the end of the process now, so we’re hoping all will go well.”

The proposed unification of the public bus system is part of the New Providence Road Improvement Programme (NPRIP), funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which also involved the upgrading of New Providence’s road network.

The project, which is being financed by $500,000 from the IDB, is an attempt to encourage jitney operators and franchise holders to take the next step towards reform, and overcome what appears to be entrenched stakeholder resistance.

However, an IDB paper, obtained by Tribune Business in the early part of last year, revealed that little progress towards practical jitney/bus industry reform has been made despite numerous reports and studies being presented to the government, some of which date back to 1992.

According to the IDB, around 280 buses served the Bahamian people on 23 different routes.