The Sunday Mail
The Government’s commitment to the continuous and steady upgrade of the ZUPCO bus fleet was shown with yet another batch of 50 new buses commissioned by President Mnangagwa on Friday, but the pressure is building up on the Government’s commitment to the continuous and steady upgrade of the ZUPCO management to match this major investment by the Second Republic.
President Mnangagwa, besides stressing his Government’s commitment to ZUPCO’s expansion, emphasised the need to keep unlicensed and unapproved private services off the roads.
In theory they should not be needed. Besides ZUPCO’s own growing fleet, there was the innovative jump in franchising private operators who were prepared to follow ZUPCO rules and regulations, and that included using ZUPCO fares, following ZUPCO routes, using ZUPCO terminuses and only stopping at ZUPCO bus stops.
The franchising took another jump almost a year ago when the lockdown regulations were able to bar non-ZUPCO services and provide the legal grounds for the police to stop and impound these vehicles carrying paying passengers.
One immediate result was a significant expansion in the ZUPCO-controlled fleet with more private operators bringing in their own buses, and the incorporation of the bulk of the road-worthy kombi fleet into the ZUPCO system.
So why do so many people continue to use mushikashika and non-ZUPCO kombis? This question ZUPCO’s management must address since ZUPCO buses, and that includes the franchised buses and kombis, are safer, cleaner and more comfortable.
The main reason why people stand at the side of the road making that chopping gesture whenever an old car that looks as though it could be a mushikashika approaches, or when one of the pirate kombis looms into view, is convenience.
Sometimes legal ZUPCO-branded buses and kombis are fairly frequent on the arterial roads leading into the city centre and you only have to wait for a maximum of 30 minutes and often far less.
At other times there are long pauses. And most irritatingly there are ZUPCO-branded vehicles that are fairly obviously not full that do not stop, travelling in the outside lane at high speed.
So many grab what is definitely available, and all those missing bus fares cannot be adding to the viability of ZUPCO services.
At its last fare increase, ZUPCO said that the return to the level four lockdown had cut the number of paying passengers.
But that was not the main reason for empty seats on ZUPCO buses.
If a ZUPCO manager had stood at a fairly busy bus stop they would have noticed a steady stream of potential passengers coming up after a ZUPCO bus had cleared the queue, and seen almost all those potential passengers “getting a lift”.
The second problem is ZUPCO’s fare structure, especially for the ZUPCO kombis. While in theory the minimum fare for a long bus is $30, almost all Harare routes are $45 routes, with the odd $60 route, since the terminuses of these routes are the outer suburbs.
That is roughly what mushikashika and pirates charge for the intermediate stops, although sometimes slightly less.
ZUPCO kombis charge double fares. Admittedly most kombis do service the shorter routes, and even when they go into the nearer stages of their $90 zone still charge $60, the minimum ZUPCO kombi fare.
But that is usually way above what a mushikashika or pirate charges, at least outside peak hours.
While the ZUPCO kombi overheads are higher for each seat than for a long bus, it is difficult to figure out why they should be twice as much.
The third problem is the ZUPCO route structure. ZUPCO routes almost all run along the major arterial roads between a city centre terminus and an outer suburb.
This has opened opportunities for pirates and mushikashika to offer other routes, for example Msasa to Mbare, and even to provide public transport to curious holes in the ZUPCO routes; there is no ZUPCO service to Avondale shops, for example, and there are vast busless blocks of housing in some suburbs.
And now, with easing of curfews and the potential growth of late shifts, there are people left behind at night, because ZUPCO does not work nights.
All four problems are soluble if ZUPCO managers started thinking like their customers and, with the reasonably rapid growth of their fleet, moved way from providing a basic service to thinking about a full public transport network. A return to scheduled services would help. Even if a bus was only running every hour, if a potential passenger knew that the bus stopped at their stop at 17 minutes past the hour they would be there five minutes early ready and waiting.
Even at night ZUPCO should return to occasional scheduled services: it used to run a bus down many arterial roads every three or four hours through the night, leaving terminuses on the hour to make scheduling easy.
The kombi fare structure needs to be sorted out, and as the Government keeps building up the fleet of long buses the kombis seem ideal for some of the missing and shorter routes, making them viable without over-high fares.
Such an upgrade in management would probably require a return to stationing inspectors or supervisors at all terminuses and some of the busier intermediate stops. And ZUPCO management should consider adopting the approach of many public transport concerns around the world and insist all staff, including managers, come to work by bus.
At least that would mean they, and the network of supervisors, would be able to see the problems and opportunities as they arose.
Many can be fixed immediately by better management and we would have managers with a better idea of what their customers want and exactly what ZUPCO is delivering.
President Mnangagwa, who keeps his 2030 Vision in mind all the time, spoke on Friday of the many advantages of a decent public transport system: less congestion, less pollution, lower costs, more convenience.
We need to reflect that most car owners in major European cities, for example, leave their cars at home during the week and take the train or metro or bus to work, because it is quicker and easier.
ZUPCO managers now need to develop their own Vision 2030, working out what a decent public transport system would look like in an upper middle income country, implement what can be implemented now and then implement a bit more every month or two as the Government commissions another batch of new buses. Starting with route signs at terminuses would be a start.
The Government is doing its job. It has resuscitated ZUPCO, and it did that within a few months of the inauguration of the Second Republic.
It is delivering on its promises of recapitalising ZUPCO and buying new batches of buses at short, regular intervals. It has even, in urban environments, restored ZUPCO’s monopoly.
But ZUPCO and its management now have to deliver their half of the programme, using that expanding fleet as fully and as efficiently as possible, designing the best possible route structures and operations and providing the sort of service everyone wants.
