The new buses by ‘Go Green Transport’
Liberalization of public transport in city of Kigali has started to pay off. A couple of weeks after the transport regulators allowed any investor with capacity to bring their buses to the struggling city transport, a new company has entered the market.
‘Go Green Transport’, a company registered in Rwanda has introduced 10 mini-buses 23-seater capacity in a trial phase. The buses, fully electric have started with some zones including Nyanza-Downtown, Remera-Downtown and Downtown- Nyabugogo as they watch how commuters respond.
The starting tariff is Rwf 500 for a single trip.
“We have shipped these buses at Rwf 93 million each. They are fully electric and can make 320-kilometer trip if fully charged,” said Tsega Solomon, one of Go Green Transport officials.
He said that the charging time is seven hours which means that one needs to leave the car on charger through the night to avoid any inconvenience during the day.
“We are studying this market before shipping a huge fleet,” Tsega said. “We have capacity to increase the fleet according to demand.”
The cars have two charging stations in Kimironko and Kicukiro, but the company commits to increase the stations with the fleet.
Scarcity of buses in Kigali’s public transport which has increased the time a passenger waits for the following bus to an average of one hour has caused public outcry.
The government is planning to ship 300 buses until April next year to solve the problem. The buses will be sold to investors once in Kigali, according to Ministry of Infrastructure.
With the coming of the new buses, the city also plans to dedicate some lanes to buses to reduce the time of a single trip during top hours.
