_{Photo: The first electric bus arrived in Belize in January this year}

One bus operator expressed concerns; Mayor Wagner says one year is strictly a data gathering phase

BELIZE CITY, Mon. June 24, 2024

After several delays, the E-buses pilot project will get underway in Belize City on Friday, July 19, 2024. The fare for the two air-conditioned 9-meter buses will be $3.00 (a dollar more than that charged by current bus operators). They will operate from Monday to Sunday from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The buses will travel from in front of the Battlefield Park, into Regent Street, then west across the foot of Swing Bridge and through to Water Lane and Bagdad Street, onto Mosul Street, down Vernon Street and into Youth for the Future Drive, onto Douglas Jones Street, then into Kelly Street toward Baymen Avenue, onto Princess Margaret Drive, into Coney Drive, and then down Buttonwood Bay Boulevard, reaching the Philip Goldson Highway and turning at the roundabout to head onto Chetumal Street. Once there, they will head back to downtown Belize City through Holy Emanuel Street, then La Croix Boulevard and onto Mahogany Street. They will then turn onto Central American Boulevard and continue to Cemetery Road, then Orange Street until they are back at Battlefield Park on Albert Street.

Ahead of the start of the project, today, one of the operators in the City, City Shuttle Ltd. (CSL) held a press conference expressing grave concern about the Electric Mobility Pilot Project. The project is funded by the European Union (EU) and is being implemented in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Philip Jones, who is named as the principal behind CSL, on March 7 this year wrote the UNDP’s Belize resident representative, Kishan Khoday, declaring that the proposed route of the E-buses will “devour the lion-share of our daily revenues.” He adds that the cherry-picking of the most lucrative routes will result in an immediate estimated revenue loss of 50%. Today at his press conference, Jones appeared with his attorney, Arthur Saldivar, but it was Saldivar alone who did a presentation and answered all of the media’s questions. He affirmed that Belize City Mayor Bernard Wagner has proposed a Public Private Partnership (PPP) for the operation of the electric vehicles (EVs) which will be detrimental to the existing operators. Saldivar stated, “He is dictating to the private sector players that they are to give up 51% of their holdings in their companies in order to participate.”

According to Saldivar, there are between 18 to 25 families dependent on CSL who would be negatively impacted by this shift. Saldivar also claims that all they have had since the talk of E-buses emerged in 2022 have been presentations which exclude dialogue and negotiation. He noted that the only definitive detail that has been disclosed is the route for the E-buses. Otherwise, alleges CSL, there is not much information being provided by the authorities about the proposal. In a follow-up e-mail to Khoday on March 26, 2024, Jones requested a closed technical meeting with UNDP, the Belize City Council and the Ministry of Transport, citing that it won’t share proprietary data with competitors.

This afternoon, Mayor Wagner and Neil Hall, the Council’s E-Transit Project Coordinator, commented on the concerns raised by CSL, which says it has been operating in the city for the last 35 years. Wagner affirmed that CSL is getting ahead of itself, as the pilot project, he says, will last one year, and is meant strictly as a data-gathering phase. When that is concluded, Wagner says they will know if scaling up a low carbon, e-mobility project is feasible. From that same data, says the Mayor, the investors/bus operators can go to financiers to fund the acquisition of more E-buses. The Mayor affirmed that inclusion has always been one of their main concerns, and “just last week I had a meeting with City Shuttle and the other counterparts.” He asserted that CSL is engaging in untruths which is disturbing. He added that it is not their intention to drive anyone out of business, and for that reason, they are ensuring that they (the E-buses) are charging a higher bus fare “so as not to underprice them out of business.” He also declared that they are giving people an option of cleaner service that will have Wi-Fi, wheelchair accessibility and a camera monitoring system for its 50 passengers.

Wagner clarified that during the one-year pilot project, the Council will run the buses itself and will therefore earn all the revenue. As to what happens thereafter, the Mayor commented, “I don’t even know where they have reached with this 51% and this 49%. That is in the future. And probably in the future when we have already received all the financial models and the feasibility of whether this thing can work in Belize City, then you will reach a point when you say, ‘alright, these are the data collected. Private sector, do you want to take on this of expansion … for scaling up? That is where we want to reach eventually. But that’s not where we are as of today.” The Mayor insists that after the pilot project, they will sit with everyone and discuss the way forward. He says that his main concern, beyond 15 families, has to be for the 60,000 residents of the city to have a choice and an enhanced quality of life. He also highlighted that it is all part of the Government’s overall platform of lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Hall says he is hopeful that with the information gathered during the pilot project, “we will be able to help them to uplift themselves. We are hoping that they will be able to become a part of the agenda to upgrade public transportation in Belize City. We are hoping that after this information is gathered and we share it with them and with every and anybody who is interested in it, that we will then be able to show that you can have a new, modern, clean, desirable bus service running commuters in the municipality of Belize City.”

On a side note, CSL presented a Gazette notice of a meeting set for February 14, 2024, for the Transport Board to consider a route in Neil Hall’s name. In communication with Amandala today, Peter Williams, the Deputy Chief Transport Officer classified that as an oversight, and clarified that the Road Service Permit was issued in the name of the Belize City Council. He added that the E-buses are the property of the Government of Belize.