The denizens of Ipoh have been pleading for a decent public transport system for years. Parents refuse to allow their children to take the bus because it is slow and rickety, and so very unreliable.
Recently, the Consortium of Bus Companies decided to add a few new buses to ply the different routes in and around Ipoh to appease the Ipohites, but travelling by bus does not seem to have caught on with the younger people.
When I was forced to take the bus the other day, I realized that there are so many reasons why buses are not commuter-friendly. In the first place, one does not know where the bus stop is. Aren’t positions of bus shelters gazetted? Then why don’t the authorities build and maintain them.
The next obstacle was not knowing which bus to hail to get to town. One passed by and said Ipoh but I was informed that it was heading for the bus station and coming back the same way. I wanted to get to Ipoh town! To avoid confusion among intercity buses, inter-town buses and intracity buses, why can’t they be differentiated, maybe by their colour or size?
Why can’t there be proper route maps at the bus shelters? Oops, I forgot, there were no bus shelters in the first place!
The local authorities recently spent RM25,000 erecting one bus shelter in the district of Ulu Kinta. I wonder why they couldn’t have spent RM5000 on five bus shelters at various designated places in Ipoh.
Anyway, something should be done to inform the public about the route and the fare that needs to be paid. The bus that I got on to that day did not even have a conductor. The driver had to stand in as the fare collector!
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