By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Jitney drivers on the number 15 route yesterday trialled a new system to see if it produces a better share of passenger fares said to still be down 70 percent compared to pre-COVID levels.

Harrison Moxey, the United Public Transportation Company’s president, told Tribune Business the rest of the industry is watching with interest the results of this week’s experiment that saw drivers line their vehicles up on the field outside Super Value’s Winton store from early morning.

He explained that the idea was for jitneys to depart every ten minutes on the route, which takes passengers the length of Prince Charles Drive to the Mall at Marathon and back, in a bid to ensure all drivers picked up at least some fares while avoiding the common practice of racing each other between stops.

“They are just trying a schedule for spacing because things are slow on the road,” Mr Moxey told this newspaper. “They’re trying to run every ten minutes rather than cram up. They’re trying to see how it works. We’ll know how it goes in a couple of days. It’s just that route for now, the number 15 drivers coming together.”

He added that the wider jitney industry is adopting a “wait and see” attitude to the new approach before any effort is made to expand it to other routes, saying: “They’re not mandated to do it. We’ll take it a step at a time. It’s something they wanted to do, but we won’t know how effective it is for a couple of days. We’ll see how it is.”

Mr Moxey said the drivers were exploring a more organised bus system, something which various governments have promised to introduce for decades but have yet to do so, in response to the slowdown inflicted by COVID-19’s economic devastation and associated health protocols.

“It’s slow. It’s hard,” he told Tribune Business. “We need to get back to full capacity to make up some traction. Passenger volumes are down, and we cannot carry a full load, so that means revenues are down. We are operating with a 50 percent passenger load but 100 percent of expenses.

“It’s not good at all. You have to pay for your insurance, pay your licence in full, only we’re not getting revenue in full. We have been impacted a huge amount. We have lost millions and millions of dollars as an industry. It’s down by 70 percent” compared to pre-COVID revenues.

Jitney drivers requested a fare increase from $1.25 to $2 at the height of the pandemic last year, but this was rejected by the Government. Mr Moxey confirmed that the industry had put the move “on hold” until the economy and employment recovered as it did not want to be responsible for burdening already-struggling passengers with a further cost increase.

“That’s been put on hold due to the hardship in the economy,” he told this newspaper, “ so we are not aggressively pursuing it recognising how bad it is for everybody. We’d like to get back to 100 percent operations first, and not put an expense on the backs of everybody. When the economy rebounds we’ll pursue that issue under better economic conditions.”