"All that glitters is not gold." Being an international tourist city, Macao should have world-class facilities that are convenient for residents and tourists. However, the real situation is different. Bus routes keep changing. People cannot get on buses since they are always crowded. How would such public bus service leave an impression on tourists?

 

It is like a constant fight for people who go to work or school by bus. If you wait for a bus in the main road like Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro or Avenida de Horta e Costa during rush hour, you may not be able to get on the bus or be squeezed like sardines in a can. There are not enough buses that should come every five to 10 minutes. "It just feels like killing me when I get on the bus during rush hour," said Yuri Ho, a student from University of Macau (UM). "I need to wait for at least 20 minutes to get on a bus since every bus is crowded."

 

Bianca Ho, a girl from City University of Macau complained that she experienced countless times being unable to squeeze into the crowded bus and now she may prefer walking instead of taking a bus. This is just a daily happening in Macao. According to the information from the Transport Bureau (DSAT), the number of average daily passenger capacity was 580,000 in the second quarter of 2018. The number seems unimaginable for a city with a population of 600,000 seemingly almost all the Macao residents take buses once a day.

 

The bus routes and stops in Macao also cause troubles to residents as well as tourists. The No. 72 is the only bus route which runs between Taipa and UM. The route had a sudden and big change in June in order to serve more people who live in Taipa to travel to UM. However, DSAT did not make enough announcements. A lot of people had no idea that some bus stops for this bus route had been cancelled. Frequent changes to bus routes and stops make people feel inconvenient or even lost.

 

Last September, DSAT changed more than 20 bus routes at the Border Gate after Typhoon Hato devastated Macao. The situation has brought inconvenience to both residents and tourists since the Border Gate is the busiest terminal in Macao. Now when people come back to Macao from the Gongbei Port in Zhuhai, they need to go to different areas for bus stops instead of one convenient central place like before.

 

This kind of traffic mess is still ongoing. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge will open very soon. More and more vehicles are anticipated. In the policy address of 2018, the government promised that they will appropriately merge or diverse the bus stops in order to improve the bus operating system. It seems the policy may alleviate some of the problems. But still, the traffic issue is always one of the biggest challenges for Macao.

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