Five more school buses for South District

There will be five additional school buses for pupils living in the South District as from Monday morning in a bid to meet demand, the Ministry of Transport has confirmed.

The increased school bus service has been introduced to meet the demand that has arisen after schools reopened earlier this month.

The S3 route will provide a bus every five minutes from Rosia Plaza to Europort from 8.15am.

There will be an additional bus service for pupils from Mid Harbours heading to St Bernard’s School as well.

This comes after some students were left stranded when school buses ran at full capacity earlier this week.

These will run in addition to the service run by the Gibraltar Bus Company.

“The amount of capacity on offer should cover a significant proportion, if not the whole of, the demand we see at peak times,” Minister for Transport, Vijay Daryanani, said.

Following a review of the bus service over the past few months, there will be changes to Routes A, B, and C.

“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,” Mr Daryanani said.

“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.”

Mr Daryanani added the demand for the service is expected to increase, both because people are now more aware of the service but an uptick in the use of bus services is generally expected in autumn.

“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,” Mr Daryanani said.

“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 buses@gibraltar.gov.gi.”

“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.