Transportation in Cuba, or the Hours of National Despair

Transportation in Cuba, or the Hours of National Despair
June 22, 2015
Naty Gabriela Gonzalez

HAVANA TIMES — I get on a bus and see people run and cling to the open
door, trying to keep their heels from being mangled. I see a mother
hoist her kid onto her shoulder and grab hold of another passenger's
waist, struggling to hold on to his neighbor with calloused hands. I get
to the door and it closes behind me. We all look at each other,
repeating the tired phrase of: "It ain't easy."

I politely try to squeeze past the crowd and they yell at me, saying
there's no room – that, if I want to get through, I have to jump over
them. Someone asks me to let them through and I say nothing. We do this
and shove each other around. The driver shuts the back doors and leaves
a woman in the middle of the road, who yells, drops her purse and sees
the discouraging spectacle of the other passengers, thronging together
and going who knows where. Why do I keep quiet? Why don't I snap back?
Why do we shove each other around?

This is not a diary entry, this is a passage of the story that repeats
itself every day at the bus stop, when one returns home, when one goes
to work, when one goes to university. Many are the debates that Cuba's
public transportation has generated since the Special Period crisis,
when it was at its worst (early/mid 1990's), and following the purchase
of Yutong-brand buses from China some years back, which improved the
situation considerably for a while.

Five or six years after these buses came into the circulation in the
Cuban capital, the situation of public transportation is once again one
of the main social issues we have to address and improve, for the
benefit of the society – particularly those who do not have 10 pesos to
pay a maquina, as people call the Chevrolets and other vintage American
cars (from the 1950s or so) that operate as collective cabs with set routes.

Two years ago, to alleviate the transportation situation some
transportation cooperatives were set up. These operate small, yellow
buses that only carry seated passengers for 5 Cuban pesos. Despite this
alternative, we continue to see the same crowded public transportation
vehicles, bus stops are still overflowing with people, the waiting time
between buses is longer and longer, people arrive late at work, school
and for appointments, and other similar situations continue to arise.

All of us have become victims of the stress this creates, in a situation
where the bus driver or the person who does not move (because there's
supposedly no more room left in the bus) become scape goats. We look at
each other with hatred for taking up a small space in the bus.

I don't understand why the Ministry of Transportation does not fix the
buses that are out of circulation to make more units available to the
public and improve transportation some.

Another solution would be to encourage the founding of transportation
cooperatives and to create private transportation routes, where public
transportation companies can operate, offering services with a fleet of
smaller vehicles or buses.

These small transportation cooperatives could pay taxes, which would
constitute another source of revenue for the State and, more than help,
provide a real break for the Cuban people.

The proposal has been made. The Ministry of Transportation can clear the
way for this and keep the Holy Bureaucracy from cursing us, creating
alternative, small and mid-sized transportation companies, the SMEs that
have yielded so many positive results in Latin America. It could even
arrange agreements between private contractors and the State, in the
event it doesn't want to fully privatize transportation. What it cannot
afford to do is to continue to maintain a situation which a friend of
mine describes as "the hours of national despair."

Source: Transportation in Cuba, or the Hours of National Despair -
Havana Times.org - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=112105