“They turned on the air,” a passenger on route P12 said excitedly on Monday. On 11J the Belgian buses appeared again on the streets of the capital, which last week were withdrawals after commuters protested the unbearable heat from inside the vehicle.
The 29 buses were donated by Belgium and arrived in Havana on June 24, which added some of them to routes P12 and P16 to try to alleviate the transportation problem that the capital is experiencing due to the lack of vehicles. Lacking windows with which to alleviate the hot journey in a city that today expects 36 degrees Celsius and a wind chill of 39, the air conditioning vents barely released a slight hot breeze.
“The first time I almost fell round,” a traveler who ventured to get on the bus told this newspaper yesterday after asking another who was getting off if the vehicle had ceased to be an oven. The cracks through which on July 4 and 5 only hot air came out finally shed a certain freshness. “The air is not that it breaks the lungs, but it already feels pleasant, because you couldn’t be in the bus. You put your hand near it and it comes out cold. They simply didn’t have the air, they had it turned off.”
The passenger ruled out that the return of the ventilation was related to 11J, but the coincidence did not fail to attract attention. The authorities, however, made no mention of the resurgence of cold air in the vehicles, but they did say, via Tribune of Havanathat the Evelio Prieto Bus Production Company was adapting the vehicles to “achieve adequate ventilation.”
The passenger ruled out that the return of the ventilation was related to 11J, but the coincidence did not fail to attract attention
For this, five windows will be enabled in the articulated buses that cover the P12 route and three in the rigid ones that are part of the P16.
Leandro Méndez Peña, general director of transport for the province, visited the company, located in Guanajay, Artemisa, to supervise the process, which requires the dismantling and adaptation of the windows that the bus currently has for replacement.
The official announced that when the 20 buses are put into circulation, several Yutong that used to travel from P12 can be transferred to another route. “The state of the roads through which the P13 passes are not suitable for Belgian buses, which have already been in operation for 14 years.”
Despite this, the virtues that Belgian buses have are the brands – the German Mercedes Benz and MAN – and their accessibility, since both have low and wide steps, as well as a suspension system that is close to the curb, facilitating that people with limited mobility get on and off.
“It is an advantage that they have with respect to other previous donations, such as the Japanese, who have high levels,” said the official.
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