By TAN KARR WEI
THE Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) will look into ways to increase ridership of its free community bus service.
The service was launched in August and has two buses that go around PJ Selatan and PJ Utara to service the elderly and the poor.
Each bus will ply their respective routes four times a day.
Poor response: Not many are making use of the free community
bus service provided by MBPJ.
Since it started, the response has been lukewarm, with only a handful of people making use of the service.
Bukit Gasing assemblyman Edward Lee took a ride on the bus to find out why.
“Many people are still not aware of the free bus service.
Inadequate info: There is a sign that says
"Free Service" in Bahasa Malaysia only on the bus.
“There is a sign on the bus stating it is a free service in Bahasa Malaysia and we will look into having this translated in Chinese and Tamil as well,” said Lee.
He said he also noticed that there were not enough stops along the routes.
Although the PJS bus goes through the district health centre in PJS 2C/5, Lee said the bus should stop at the Universiti Hospital as many people from the lower-income group seek treatment there.
An MBPJ officer said those who want to get on the bus could flag down the bus even if they were not at the designated bus stops. Most of the stops were near flats but do not have proper bus shelters.
Lee said it was more cost-efficient for the buses to go through routes with existing bus shelters so that MBPJ did not have to build new ones.
“We also need to discuss with the commercial bus operators to see if we can complement their routes,” said Lee.
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