Lallmatie.com Blog

NTC has just stopped offering the Port Louis -Depinay - Lallmatie - Flacq 176 route. I hear people say that it was not profitable. So ‘bus individuel’ are not taking that route in the morning. I can understand that with so many buses in the Flacq-Port Louis route. Now I hear talks that they’re saying that 222 Rempart-Laventure/Petite Retraite-Lallmatie-Quartier Militaire-Reduit-Rose Hill might also be stopped for the same reason. As if it’s not profitable.

According to my research on Google, they put only 9 buses on the 222 route and 10 in the 226 (Rempart-Curepipe) as per a couple of years ago. Imagine with all the crowd waiting and rushing to get buses in the morning. They could easily have put an extra 3 buses from 6-8 am and from 3-5 pm. But no, you have to rush, the conductor will stop you cause the buses go FULL during that time with standing. On some days, there are more than 20 standings. Not legal, but as a service, I personally would prefer to be standing than to go late at work/uni. Thanks to the conductors for understanding. But too often during the past 10 years have I seen 222 buses come and go and not taking people - there simply aren’t enough buses on this route! And they talk about not profitable… Mismanagement as we all saw in the newspapers? And who suffers? Everyday commuters like everyone without a car/lift!

It’s great time that either NTC becomes a private company, where the management should do an entensive survey on all the routes offered to find out on which ones more buses are needed, and which ones less. Secondly, proper maintenance to be done on the buses (imagine seeing older UBS, TBS buses being in better conditions!). And then liberalise the routes. Competitions Act is already here. Monopoly on routes should be illegalised (if that word exists), especially on the 222 route!