A contributor's piece

Getting from A to B ... the long way round

Readers of advancing age might remember a popular sit-com from the late Sixties and early Seventies in England.

On the Buses was a weekly comedy show depicting a chaotic bus company in London.  The management had a marginal grip on the staff, causing mayhem for everyone.  Timetables were a moveable feast depending on the vagaries of the employees’ lives, domestic and romantic.  Crews of both sexes afforded Carry On-style fun and frolics.

1971 London ... not so different from Cyprus today

The government-controlled bus company of Cyprus is doing its best to emulate the worst practices of this ‘fictional’ company in England 40 years ago. 

The local bus service in Larnaca is not run in the interest of customers, timetables are changed at whim, and routes seem to be more and more arbitrary every day. 

The main bus route on the Larnaca-Dhekelia road, between the tourist area and the town centre, is an open sore for everyone using public transport in Cyprus.   Well-heeled tourists who do not wish to drive in Cyprus (because it’s scary) or simply do not drive, college students, hotel workers, and ordinary citizens suffer alike. 

When the bus reaches the Makarios Avenue roundabout (the one with the pointless 2 million euro water fountain), it inexplicably heads for Larnaca Port, down narrow back streets jammed on both sides with badly parked cars, but strangely, makes no stop there.  Back into Makarios Avenue, down Archbishop Kyprianou Avenue into a bus depot, where it parks up briefly for no clear reason while passengers look at each other in perplexity, then on to Phinikoudes beach: the central point where most people want to get off. 

The rationale for this circuitous and pointless route is mystifying. 

People trying to meet other bus connections at the seafront, local and inter-city, miss them because of all the faffing about.  I have seen many passengers express their frustrations to the drivers, but what can the drivers do?  They’re just following orders. 

Does anyone know where we're going?

Buses in Cyprus have become a metaphor for the directionless, chaotic state of this nation.  Let’s not allow Cyprus to become an old sit-com.