If you're a regular user of public transportation, you may have noticed that instead of the normal diesel dollar buses, an electric one was skirting through the Belize City streets. It's the start of the year long pilot project, one that was promised since 2022. But now the buses have arrived and they're being tested.
However, this project has been both championed and criticized before it even launched. And today, Courtney Menzies spoke to the Mayor about it. Here is that story.
This parking area, located downtown, will be the home of the new electronic buses for Belize City. This long awaited project is finally taking form, and today, the buses were being tested on the Southside streets.
One bus was seen with passengers on Holy Emmanuel, before making its way down Cemetery Road and to the designated depot.
But before these buses even hit the streets, they were the center of controversy. City Shuttle Limited, the company in charge of many of the city bus runs, complained that they were not consulted, and they feared that they would be pushed out of the business.
Today Mayor Bernard Wagner said that criticism is to be expected with development.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"My response is typically when change come, people complain, but you have to embrace change. We want to transform the public transportation system at least in the city. It has been over 50 years that we have not seen any sort of growth, any sort of development in the transport system. We have an opportunity here and we have to embrace it where you are able to have the residents of the city drive in a modern bus which is efficient, reliable, eco friendly, less pollution in the air. We are able to track it via the app that we have in place on it and so it makes life easier, we have capabilities for wheelchairs, commuters will have WIFI, it will have AC, it's just pilot project. I continuously say that, it's a pilot project, it will inform scaling opportunities for the city when we reach that point, we have not reached that point yet. I don't see why people are looking way ahead, two, three years ahead, let the e-mobility pilot project work first, let us get the required data which will inform scaling up."
And he explained the purpose of the pilot project is to test whether the project can be sustained on a larger scale.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"The one year come, it's feeding the information, we capture all the information, we gather the data and we look at the financial models and say maybe we could scale this up, maybe we now look at going to the private sector and saying, partner, this is the financial model, this can work here in the city. You want to take it on, here is the data. But you have to be able to, if you go into a financial institution, the first thing they're going to ask you, has any studies been done? Where is the financial model? We have to see if it will work and this is what this pilot project is all about."
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