Gulf News took a ride on Sharjah's new city bus service
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00:00All about bus number 14. It's taken some time, but this is Sharjah's very first city bus
00:11service. There may only be one route, but plucky number 14 covers almost all the city
00:17single-handedly in a little over two hours. And these are some of the first passengers
00:22trying it out. It's the first of a series of bus routes to be rolled out across the
00:27emirate. We hopped on and talked to some early morning commuters.
00:32Sometimes you have to wait for the passengers and sometimes go quickly. I don't know. Morning
00:39I ride it and he go quickly. The driver and the fellow people, they do not know the English.
00:47That language problem is very difficult for the foreigners.
00:52Number 14 still has to deal with Sharjah's snarling traffic though. And as the bus gets
00:57packed with commuters, it can get a tad stuffy. But it's all part of a longer-term strategy
01:03to change mindsets about public transport. All the design of the streets always have
01:09been made, the thought always is for cars. We've been getting a lot of vibes and a lot
01:16of people happy to have a service because they were suffering before.
01:22The buses will have state-of-the-art technology like automated fare collection and passenger
01:27information displays. People will also be able to log on to a dedicated website to plan
01:33their journeys. These are baby steps for the emirate's first bus service. It does seem
01:38popular. But whether the majority of people will choose to abandon their cars for a bus
01:44is still a question that city planners are pondering. Sunita Manon, Gulf News.
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