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to have replaced all of the city’s former school buses. While a new fleet of buses will
effort in response to the 1972 earthquake that devastated Managua. Hundreds of school buses continued to arrive, coming primarily by ship through Puerto Corinto, but the fleet is now growing old, over- crowded and unsafe. Indeed, in some of the buses I rode, I could see the street’s pavement through holes in the floor. To address
these safety concerns,
President Daniel Ortega announced his Modernization Plan for Urban Transport in Managua. Tis ambitious plan charges IRTRAMMA with forecasting passen- ger demand and assigning new buses to meet it. To start the planning process, the agen-
cy installed infrared passenger counters at the entrance and exit of every bus in the city. Initially, convincing the bus owner cooperatives to allow the instal- lation of these devices was difficult; the cooperative management soon realized, however, that accurate passenger counts would allow them to determine how much fare revenue the drivers were sur- reptitiously pocketing — which turned out to average 40 percent. Hundreds of “buses amarillos” have
already been replaced under this modernization plan, mostly by the afore- mentioned Kavz buses. Tough they are more comfortable and less polluting than the old school buses they replaced, these 28-seat buses have had numerous problems acclimating to Managua’s hot climate, including issues with bearings, lubrication and brakes. In February, IRTRAMMA finalized a
deal with Dina S.A. for 350 new buses. By next month, just before the country’s presidential elections, IRTRAMMA plans
score political points, the govern- ment is also working under the political constraint of an afford- able fare policy. Alvarado said that affordability “to favor the people with the fewest resources in society” was at the top of his agency’s agenda. A couple of years ago, the govern-
ment proposed raising the bus fare from 13 cents to 15 cents, spark- ing disruptive student strikes that
eventually convinced the govern- ment to forego the fare increase. Maintaining affordability while modernizing the fleet was made possible by President Ortega’s par- ticipation in the ALBA economic partnership, which directs some of the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales towards social projects like transportation. At the ALBA Transporte facility
I visited, dozens of old school bus- es were parked and waiting to be scrapped while the newly arrived buses from Russia were being in-
spected and prepared for use. It seems that as long as Venezuelan oil keeps flowing, the market for our old school buses in Managua might eventually dry up. ■
Stewart is a graduate of Swarth- more College and a recipient of a 2010 Tomas J. Watson Fellow- ship, a grant to study abroad. Stewart’s recently concluded proj- ect was “School Bus Migrations: Recycling Transit in the Global South.” He is now headed to MIT to continue his studies.
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