Government Announces Additional School Buses
The Government has announced that as of Monday 14th September, an increased school bus service will be implemented.
A statement from the Government follows below:
Further to announcements made earlier this week, the Minister for Transport, the Hon Vijay Daryanani, has today confirmed that, as of Monday 14th September at 08.15 hours, Government will be providing a significantly increased school bus service to meet the demand that has arisen on the reopening of the schools this month.
The Minister explained that: “The team at the Ministry has been working very hard during the last few months, during the time that we have been running the additional Routes A, B and C, to ensure that we could redeploy resources at our disposal to meet demand as and when it arose. Following a thorough review of data about the use of our buses, catchment areas and the likely requirement for bus services, we have this week finalised the work and made important changes which I am sure will make the experience of sending children to school by bus the best option by far for most parents.”
The Minister continued: “The additional routes we had been running have provided us with an opportunity to develop our understanding of how we can meet demand seasonally, as we have also been gathering some data on the use of these services during the course of the summer. We will be deactivating Route B, which has served the needs of beachgoers so well this summer and removing Route A too - the latter saw very little use. The data we have gathered has shown that Route C was the most popular and effective route and we will continue to run this service. In fact, we expect demand for this service to increase both because people are now more aware of it but also because, as we move into Autumn, we expect an uptick in the use of bus services generally.”
“The effect of this redeployment is that from Monday morning we will have an additional five buses serving the S3 route, providing a bus every five minutes from Rosia Plaza to Europort from 08.15. These will be in addition to the many services the Bus Company normally runs in any event. The amount of capacity on offer should cover a significant proportion, if not the whole of, the demand we see at peak times. In addition, further services will be provided from other points, including from Mid Harbours as set out in the detailed table below:
Minister Daryanani concluded by saying: “Since I took over the Ministry for Transport back in October, I have been privileged to work with a great team of talented and committed individuals who are working tooth and nail to make transport work in Gibraltar like never before. It is sometimes hard for them to see all their hard work and genuine, selfless effort at trying to improve the quality of life of all Gibraltarians summarily rubbished by those with agendas or on the basis of anecdotes which fail to capture the reality of the hard work and huge strides we are taking in the right direction for transport in Gibraltar. We have heard nothing about all the excellent added bus services this summer and that;s only because that service has been entirely beyond reproach in terms of frequency and punctuality. I have to thank all the drivers in the Gibraltar Bus Company and all our contractors for the stirling work they are doing in often difficult circumstances.”
“Let me be clear about one thing. As long as I am the Minister for Transport, the people of Gibraltar can rest assured that, as night follows day, if a demand for bus services arises, that demand will be met by me. Our focus is to eliminate, as far as possible, any barriers to the use of buses, cycling or walking to work as we can.”
“It doesn’t matter that we have, in effect, trebled capacity over the last few days - that’s really not the point - we continue to work hard on improving these services yet further and hope to make announcements in this regard soon. I remind everyone that if they have suggestions in relation to this or any other aspect of transport in Gibraltar, we would be grateful to receive an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.”
“With the tender for the electric buses and the further buses for the Upper Town now published, our work on bus routes, the investment in cycling and infrastructure, and many more initiatives to follow, I am confident that it won’t be long before the people fully recognise this Government as the Government that has delivered more than any other in Traffic and Transport, as well as in every other field of Government responsibility.”
For more information on the bus service please call 200 47622.
