Havana’s public transportation to be reduced due to fuel shortage

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Public transportation in Havana will be reduced in routes, frequency, and number of buses in circulation due to a new deficit in the supply of imported fuels informed on Sunday.

Bus routes that run along the most important avenues of the Cuban capital, which run from the outskirts to the center of the city, will be preserved and explained to the general director of the provincial Transport Company, Juan Caballero state-run media.

The executive said that the measure would affect some 1,466 routes of several routes in the Cuban capital. Some 140 vehicles will stop circulating and will be used to undergo repairs and improve their technical condition.

In Havana – home to 2.2 million inhabitants – some 700 buses circulate daily, which before the limitations adopted due to the coronavirus pandemic moved an average of 1.4 million people.

The city’s transport system has 17 main long-distance routes and a network of 109 so-called “feeder” routes that cover complementary routes.

The recently announced reduction, without specifying its entry into force, will prioritize the corridors of the neighborhoods of Diez de Octubre, Alamar, Calzada de Güines, and 51st Avenue in the municipality of Marianao.

In the case of “feeder” routes, which help passengers reach the main roads, the new measure will lengthen the frequency of bus trips.

The public transportation service in Havana is insufficient to meet the mobility needs of the population, which has private carriers as an alternative.

A state television report on this new fuel restriction that has forced a reduction in public transportation in Havana blamed the current U.S. government for maintaining Cuban fuel purchases abroad and causing a negative repercussion in various sectors of the island.

The government attributed last Friday several hours of power outages in Havana and other regions of Cuba to breakdowns and fuel shortages in the main power plants in the western part of the country.

In the last two years, Cuba has experienced fuel shortage problems. In September 2019, the country experienced a complicated energy situation that authorities attributed to Washington’s sanctions, which hindered the arrival of oil tankers.

That situation particularly affected diesel fuel. Given that circumstance, the island’s Government arranged a series of “adjustment and saving measures” that impacted mainly public transport services.

A few months later, in February 2020, another period of shortage of diesel and gasoline was repeated on the island, which caused long lines at gas stations in the Caribbean country.