The Quality Bus System service may not be able to meet the October 9 schedule for commencing full operation as they earlier assured but is certain to commence before the end of the month.
The service, which commenced test operations last week suffered many setbacks including challenges with registering and insuring the buses as well as difficulty of drivers to operate the electronic information system in the buses.
The managers later suspended the service for days to retrain its drivers and revise its operating strategy.
The development cast doubt over the prospects of the service in the capital, but the Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Accra Passenger Transport Executive (GAPTE) told Citi News, their simulation exercise with the buses will continue until they are ready to roll out the transport service fully in the country.
“It is an ongoing process and as and when we encounter a challenge, we bring in the technicians to fix them so we are hoping that by then [9th October] we would have completed the exercises successfully and then we will be ready for the inauguration and the launch,” he said.
He added that “I cannot tell you for sure [when the testing will end] because it depends on what we will see during the exercise and how far the interventions in terms of remedial actions will go but hopefully sometime within October we should be ready for commercial operations.
No dedicated lanes for ‘BRT’, it’s now Quality Bus System
The Implementers of the transport service, GAPTE, earlier changed the name of the service which was previously known as the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) to Quality Bus System (QBS) because the buses are yet to have dedicated lanes. CEO, Sampson Gyamenah, admitted in an interview on Eyewitness News that there were currently no dedicated lanes, a critical element of any BRT system and instead called what is being implemented a Quality Bus System.
“We do not have a full blown dedicated lane for the buses so I will also hesitate to call what we are putting in place a BRT. It is called a Quality Bus System,” he said.
Service to be expanded
The newly introduced bus service is expected to be expanded to other parts of Accra to help transport passengers faster and more conveniently.
The bus will soon be operational on the Accra – Legon – Madina – Adenta stretch as well as the Kasoa-Accra stretch.
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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana