In
a bide to facilitate the transport services in the city of Dar es Salaam during
rushing hours in the morning and evening time, the need for more buses was
necessary to ease the incurring congestion in the city’s traffic roads. In view
of this a consignment of about 70 buses worth over 40bn/- belonging to the
famous Usafiri Dar es Salaam Rapid Transport (UDART) arrived yesterday from
China, aiming to ease congestion in their areas of operation. Speaking to
journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the Managing Director (MD) of UDART, Mr
Charles Newe, observed that the arrival of the buses will help strengthen the
transportation system in the city. “With each vehicle having the capacity to
accommodate about 160 passengers, they will therefore increase the number of
users enormously from the current 200,000 and reduce the cost of travelling.
On
the other hand, about 70 to 100 direct employment will be created, leave alone
the number of indirect employment, this means a boost to the country’s
economy,” said Mr Newe. He noted that the increase makes a total of 210 buses,
with the current demand requiring up to 305 buses to accommodate the users. He
further noted that people using their own vehicles will be able to save a
maximum of 8,000/-, as they will only spend 2,000/- instead of 10,000/- for
their go and return fares to and from their work stations. The MD also observed
that plans are under way to introduce more feeder routes in the northern part
of the BRT roads. Mr Newe also revealed plans of coming up with solutions to
tackle some of the existing challenges, such as access of prepaid cards and
long queues for obtaining tickets. “The transport system is designed in such a
way that at least 70 per cent of its users should acquire prepaid cards, but
it’s different here since only 30 percent.
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