5 January
YBS Bus No 88 was full of people as I board it. As I need to take two YBS bus routes in order to go to my office, I just had to wade into the crowded bus. This was a daily routine that I had to face as taking a taxi was an expensive option. A new train and bus interchange project started on a pilot stage at Yangon Thamaing station was expected to ease the experience of tightly packed YBS buses that people like me were facing everyday whenever we went to work.
In Yangon there were a huge numbers of people commuting on public transports like YBS buses, circular train and ferries like water bus. According to a 2016 Asia Development Bank re-port, of the daily commuters in Yangon, 22.5 per cent use bicycle, 7.2 per cent use motorcycles, 49.4 per cent use bus and 1.1 per cent use train.
With the aim of providing the best service to the major-ity of Yangon commuters that were using buses for their daily commute, a pilot train and bus interchange project was started at Yangon Thamaing railway sta-tion (Butayone in Myanmar lan-guage) bus stop on Baho Street on 2 December, 2019.
The interchange will allow train or bus passengers to switch easily to train or bus and con-tinue their journey seamlessly said Yangon Region Transport Authority (YRTA) joint secretary U Hla Aung.
Public transport in Yangon became an important sector in transportation, due to road con-gestion in Yangon and population increase in Yangon from rural to urban migration. Increase in businesses, shops and factories and foreign investments create more job opportunities that in turn increased population density in Yangon as well as daily commuters.
The pilot train and bus in-terchange project was being jointly implemented by Myanma Railway, YRTA, Yangon City De-velopment Committee, Yangon Region Traffic Police and Japan International Cooperation Agen-cy (JICA).
In Thamaing Butayone station, crossing the pedestri-an bridge over the rail tracks will bring you to YBS bus stop. YBS Bus 11 plying between Aung Mingala Highway depot and Latha bus stop in down town Yangon, YBS Bus 22 plying be-tween Yangon West University and Thakin Mya Park stops, YBS Bus 94 plying between Computer University and Yangon Central Railway station stops at this bus stop. Anyone who came along the circular railway line or along the bus routes can go to other des-tinations along the railway line or the bus routes conveniently.
Yangon’s public transport network plays an important role in the social and economic life of the people and changing over from one bus line to another or another mode of transport is an important step in the entire pro-cess. This step allows the public to change over from one main route to another main route con-veniently.
This pilot project was anoth-er step to raise the bus service provided to the public and if it is successful, more train and bus interchange projects will be expanded and developed to Pazun-taung and Kyimyindaing train stations and then on to other train stations as well.
YBS buses 15, 16, 19, 61, 68, 79 and 83 stops at Zay Buta bus stop and U Ba Han bus stop near Thamaing train station and bus stop or interchange allowing commuters to change over to these routes conveniently. Circu-lar train from Thamaing station to Yangon Central Railway sta-tion took only about 45 minutes and during the morning rush hour waiting time between two trains are about 15 minutes only. At the same time, waiting time for buses at the interchange bus stop is only about four minutes allowing commuters a quick and convenient changeover from one route to another.
This train and bus inter-change will allow the commut-ers to reduce their daily total travel time. It will also allow the commuter to expand the range of destination too.
At the moment, some YBS bus stops serving several bus lines had designated places for each bus line to stop like the bus stops at the Town Hall in Sule, Sanpya market and Gamon Pwint market while some bus stops had different alighting and boarding points for passengers. These plus the train and bus in-terchanges are expected to raise the service provided to Yangon commuters to higher and better level.
By Swe Oo Wai
Translated by Handytips
