The Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) has not been efficient in its delivery of service in the last few months, admitted chairman Edwin Gooding, due to the number of buses that have been down. Among them are the 12 buses provided with Wi-Fi service in July 2016.
“I am aware we are not servicing our public as well as we could,” he said, adding that there are not enough buses to service the PTSC’s 36 routes across the country.
As a result, some routes which were serviced three times a day are now being serviced only once or twice.
Gooding said: “We are still not able to deliver 100 per cent because the buses that we have are old.
“Our average bus is maybe over 15 years. We do have challenges but we are doing a refurbishment project where we are looking to fix some of the buses to be brought back out into service.”
PTSC’s current fleet consists of just over 300 buses and ideally 80 per cent should be operating. Gooding said between 15 to 20 per cent receive preventative maintenance or repairs daily.
“At present what we have on the road is around 240 buses,” he said, adding that this not good enough if PTSC is to provide an efficient and reliable service to the public.
He said one of the big challenges for the company, is getting spare parts in a timely manner to repair the buses.
“We are in a financial crunch, as you know, so we have to be very efficient in how we spend our funding for parts. That is a real factor. We are now doing an exercise—working out what each bus would require.
At this point in time we have a figure of about $4 million needed in parts,” he said.
Parts will come from China, the United States and local contractors.
“We expect by the end of September that the parts would have come in and put on the buses and our run out should improve,” Gooding said.
That means the public will have to wait three more months before the PTSC’s fleet is returns to adequate levels..
Recently, 35 new buses were added to the fleet, of which 15 went to Tobago. Early next year, another 25 will be purchased at a cost of $30 million. Some will use CNG and 22 will be equipped with wheelchair ramps and lifts.