Commute is rocky road in Cuba
Unreliable buses, lack of cars fuel rise in hitchhiking
Herald Staff Report
HAVANA -- It took a half hour poking his head in strangers' cars
for Henry
Cadenas to get a lift home.
Most drivers turned him down in favor of pretty young women also
using Cuba's
rising form of public transportation: hitchhiking. In a country
where cars are
reserved for the privileged, and buses are overcrowded and unreliable,
these crafty
commuters have few alternatives.
``I usually take the bus, which is not always bad, but today they
announced in
class that there are no buses headed to our dorms because the
bus ran out of
gas, so here I am,'' said Cadenas, a university student who moved
to Cuba from
Ecuador last year. ``In my country, I think we have less public
transportation but
more gasoline.''
A blue Fiat finally offered Cadenas a ride.
``Thank God,'' he said. ``I've been here 30 minutes and I've had it.''
Cadenas is like most people in Cuba -- a commuter without a car,
subject to the
whims of gasoline shortages, tire shortages and long waits for
a bus. Mass transit
is considered one of Cuba's most serious crises, one that Transportation
Minister
Alvaro Perez says has suffered a ``brutal deterioration.''
``When there is no money, or it is not enough to cover the vital
necessities,
transportation gets a lower priority,'' Perez said at a press
conference in
September. ``The lack of transportation vehicles is a grave situation
-- above all, in
the interior of the country.''
HORSE AND CARRIAGE
Outside the capital, people have turned to horse-drawn carriages
as a way to get
around.
Perez said Cuba had 15,600 mass transit vehicles 30 years ago.
Now it has
3,800. In 1988, the transportation system handled 3.2 million
riders. The end of
Soviet subsidies -- which meant the end of spare parts and maintenance
for the
bus fleets -- brought that to 560,000 in 1995. He hopes a recent
upswing means
the bus system will have carried 700,000 passengers this year.
Frequent bus breakdowns often mean waits of hours or even days.
Commuter
Humberto Garcia joked that he wasn't born black -- he got that
way after long
hours under a bright sun at the bus stop.
``Look how dark I got waiting out here for the No. 45!'' he said
with a hearty laugh
and a slap of his knee.
Garcia had left his house across town at 5:30 a.m. to get to his
mother's house
by 9 a.m.
``Sometimes the bus is already full, or they pass you up because
they are only
allowed to pick up so many passengers per feet, or they'll take
one person and
leave you behind,'' he said. ``Nobody I know has their own car.
In my house I'm
rich because I have a bicycle.''
Laws regulate car ownership, so most people must rely on mass
transit. The
gutsy ride with strangers. Some have the American dollar bill
it takes to share a
cab.
`THE CAMEL'
``Private taxis cost one dollar,'' Garcia said. ``I make $3.50
a day. How am I going
to pay a third of my wages for a ride home? My bus, the `camel,'
[is cheap] but
when they say there is no gas, there is no bus.''
``Camels'' are 18-wheelers transformed into monster buses packed
with riders.
The name comes not from its plodding speed, but because the bus
is split into
two large sections. The fare is about one U.S. cent -- half the
price of the more
comfortable omnibuses.
``This is not a crowded bus, this is an empty bus,'' said Benito
Garcia, fare
collector on the M-1, a camel jammed with passengers heading
to eastern
Havana. ``There are times they are so full you could not possibly
fit another
person in.''
Garcia acknowledged that it frequently takes him several hours to get to work.
``It takes, well, as long as it takes,'' he said. ``If the bus
before yours broke down,
then it will take a while. It's better to leave your house with
plenty of time.''
He paused to address the squished riders on the M-1 who were not
budging to
make space for the dozens of passengers lined up outside.
``There's room!'' he shouted to the hundred or so on board. ``If
you say `Excuse
me,' there's room!''