WEANING us of our love affair with our cars was never going to be the easiest of tasks, but the introduction of OSEL’s swish new bus service in Nicosia last summer was piecemeal at best.
Nicosia’s fleet of sleek new buses certainly look the part with their electronic signs, air-conditioned interiors and comfy seats. But logistically the new service has been hampered by unacceptable delays.
Take the new timetables. They were supposed to be ready by August.
Weeks later they were “still at the printers”, according to the harassed woman at the bus company’s information office at Solomou Square in Nicosia. When they were finally ready in autumn, visitors to the kiosk were told that only printed timetables for the new routes were available for the time being, as the old routes remained the same. Somehow new customers – the very people the company were supposed to be luring in – were expected to know what those old routes were!
Nicosians, meanwhile, were promised they would receive promotional leaflets through their letter boxes describing the virtues of the new service. They were also promised detailed maps, similar to those found in other European cities, showing the full extent of the routes.
Presumably these too are still at the printers.
Of the promised English timetables there has been no sign. Several times in recent months Cyprus Mail reporters have called OSEL, the bus company, to find out when these might ready, and published the dates given in reply in the newspaper in good faith. All to no avail. The latest deadline to be missed is December 15. This was when OSEL director said the company’s website (http://www.osel.com.cy/) would be translated into English. As of yesterday this still had not happened.
Based on this performance, his statement that a Turkish translation was also “in the pipeline” should inspire no hope in any Turkish Cypriot.
The success of the new service was always going to rest nearly as much on how well it was promoted as it did on getting rid of those depressing tatty, old buses. And the promotion has been unacceptably poor.
The pain of braving the Christmas-New Year traffic – made so much worse this year by ongoing roadworks at virtually every point of entry into Nicosia, and on other major roads – could have been eased greatly, had more people only taken the bus. But they can’t use public transport if they don’t know the basic details.
Long-term sophisticated marketing ploys are what’s really necessary to cure car-addicted Cypriots who traditionally dismiss buses as the domain of immigrants and the elderly. In the meantime, however, can we at least have a map?
