The Ministry of Transport and Aviation will be designing a pilot project on a sustainable urban bus system.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a technical cooperation grant for $500,000 to help The Bahamas Ministry of Transport and Aviation plan and design a pilot project that will demonstrate a "sustainable urban bus system". The project was required to begin in February 2016, with a team led by an Italian consultant, and requires The Bahamas to provide $30,000 in in-kind funding. And the timeline means that by spring 2017, the government will have to make a decision about whether or not to implement a unified bus system using this project as a model.
The 36-month long project - to be executed in 30 months - is being funded by the Italian Fund for Technical Cooperation Projects (TC). From a high level, the project is expected to produce "stakeholder agreement" on a unification modality, and ultimately a signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the ministry and owners/operators. The onus will then be on the government to implement the recommendations.
Closer to the ground, the project is supposed to result in completed operations of the pilot bus unification project as a going concern for 18 months - nine months in 2016 and nine in 2017 - and evaluation reports, with recommendations for possible island-wide roll-out. The desired outcome is that those recommendations will be approved and adopted by the government of The Bahamas.
The IDB identifies the risk that both sides may not "buy in" as an issue.
"The risks identified for this TC are moderate and do not represent an important deterrent for the development of this project. The primary risk is a lack of collaboration, engagement and participation that could limit robust analysis of the results risking stakeholder buy-in. The operation will innately mitigate this risk though the pilot initiative that will engage all stakeholders in the activities from the start of the TC and through an intensive dissemination strategy from the design through to the implementation recommendation stage of the bus system.
Justification
The objectives and justification for the technical cooperation note that the approximately 280 buses servicing the public on 23 routes are all privately owned and operate under individual franchises.
"However, ineffective regulation has resulted in excessive competition on popular routes and little or no coordination amongst them to maintain schedules, creating severe problems of coverage, reliability and safety. Also pending to be solved is the issue of how public transport can be articulated with appropriate pedestrian spaces and sustainable urban growth. Also pending is the institutional and legal architecture necessary to govern the systems of urban mobility," the IDB notes.
The IDB has financed two studies to address these issues: the Transportation Development Plan for New Providence (which recommended a unified bus system) and The Business Plan for the Unified Bus System for New Providence. The bank noted the deterioration of negotiations between the government and bus operators, and said that as a next step, the government has agreed with stakeholders to support the implementation of the bus unification process through a pilot demonstration initiative of the proposed Unified Bus System.
"The objective of this technical cooperation is to provide technical support to the Ministry of Transport and Aviation to operationalize and evaluate a demonstration pilot project of the proposed Unified Bus System. The... outputs of (the project) would be critical inputs to the government's future decision on an island-wide roll-out of the bus unification system in the island of New Providence," the IDB said.
One critical component of the technical cooperation is the underlying principle promoted by the IDB of sustainable mobility, which is "understood as a way to avoid unnecessary motorized travel, shift mobility along sustainable strategies - walking, cycling and public transport - and improve the efficiency of existing modes".
Components
The first component of the project is support for the design and operation of a pilot demonstration initiative of the urban bus system, which will entail hiring a consulting firm to "assist the Ministry of Transport and Aviation with all the necessary technical support activities required to prepare, develop, implement and operationalize a sustainable pilot urban bus transit system". That support will include infrastructure design, legislative and institutional support for the establishment of operational and regulatory bodies as well as evaluation studies of the pilot demonstration initiative of the urban bus system in order to fully understand and structure the relative responsibilities and risk of all stakeholders in the public-private partnership underpinnings of the bus system. This component will, according to the IDB budget for the technical cooperation, finance all the necessary consulting activities and support services required to develop and operationalize a pilot urban bus system. It is budgeted to cost $350,000, all funded by the IDB and the ITC, with no counterpart funding from The Bahamas required.
The next component will support the strengthening of the Ministry of Transport and Aviation, for the conduct of the final audit and to provide supervision for this cooperation.
"Accordingly, this component will support a project manager, who will be key in providing the executing unit with the necessary proficiency to address the additional technical and execution requirements generated. This component will also support the in-kind contribution of office space and furnishings for the PEU (project executing unit). The executing agency will also provide in-kind support for the part-time services of a procurement/accounting officer and an office assistant," the IDB said.
The $180,000 budget for this component - including the $30,000 in in-kind funding - includes hiring (i) an administrative assistant and (ii) a project manager; (iii) office space and furnishings for the PEU and (iv) the financial audit and evaluation. It will also require a part-time procurement officer.
K. Quincy Parker
Guardian Business Editor
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