Missing the bus

Improving the state of the Valley’s public buses will be a great boon to hundreds of thousands of daily commuters.

People from all walks of life in the valley rely on public buses, which account for 20 percent of all vehicles in Kathmandu. Regular commuters are familiar with the ordeal of long waits to travel in cramped, congested buses with hardly any space to stand. If they don’t do so, they either miss work in the morning or don’t make it home in the evening. Not only does this situation discomfort people, it also sometimes leads to accidents. To add to the commuters’ woes, drivers and their helpers often misbehave, and women are regularly harassed. Our public buses thus fail the people they are supposed to serve.