After assessing the impact of the new system, the President of the Mini Bus Association, Merchel Hippolyte, says one long-standing issue persists. According to him, unregistered bus operators pirate the route.

“What we’ve seen happening is a lot more demand. But we do have some guys who operate an illegal shuttle service from Castries to the community,” Hippolyte explained. He says the presence of the shuttle service hampers the effectiveness of the rollout. In a previous SNO interview, bus operators of the 5E route expressed their fears that the shuttle service would negatively affect their new strategy.

“That is illegal, as per regulation 60 of the Motor and Traffic Regulations. You cannot pick up or disembark passengers anywhere within the city, other than the authorized designated bus stand. So we do have this still happening. That is detrimental to the service,” Hippolyte complained.

Overall, he noted, the implementation has been widely praised by the community the route serves. “We launched the initiative on September 4th, in time for the reopening of school. It’s been a welcome initiative - it’s really doing what we expected it to do. What we want is to have more customers coming to the bus stop and customers having a more efficient service, where they don’t have to wait for hours to get a bus to full. So we have a bus leaving the terminal every 10 minutes.”

Hippolyte says the Mini Bus Association is working with the Department of Transport to bring about an end to the illegal shuttle service. He also encourages passengers to use the registered buses at the terminal.