The Transport Department (TD) announced today (December 4) that the service adjustments of some franchised bus routes have been approved as there has been a drastic drop in patronage due to the implementation of measures to reduce the flow of people and social contacts to stop COVID-19 from spreading in the community.
To cope with the decreasing passenger demand and ensure efficient use of resources, Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited (KMB), New World First Bus Services Limited (NWFB), Citybus Limited (Citybus) and New Lantao Bus Company (1973) Limited (NLB) have submitted applications to the TD for temporary service adjustments of some bus routes after reviewing their operational and service arrangements. The TD has examined the applications taking into account factors such as the extent of the patronage drop of the routes concerned, occupancy, impact of the proposed service adjustments on the waiting time, bus resources deployment, public acceptability to the proposed frequency adjustment, etc, and has approved the following bus companies to adjust the frequencies of a total of 227 routes from December 7 to 13. The details are as follows:
| Bus company | No. of routes approved for frequency adjustment |
| KMB | 110 |
| NWFB | 48 |
| Citybus (except airport and North Lantau routes) | 56 |
| KMB/NWFB jointly-operated | 6 |
| KMB/Citybus jointly-operated | 6 |
| NLB | 1 |
| Total | 227 |
Among the routes approved for frequency adjustments, the headway before 10pm (during peak and off-peak periods) will be lengthened by no more than five minutes while the headway after 10pm will be lengthened by no more than 10 minutes, and the extended headway will not exceed 30 minutes. Moreover, four bus routes with extremely low patronage have been approved to be suspended or have operating hours adjusted. The TD has requested the bus companies to closely monitor the change in passenger demand and consider strengthening services whenever necessary, and to allow more space for passengers if resources permit.
The service adjustments of the relevant bus routes have been approved for a period of seven days. The TD will consider the actual circumstances to review the service adjustments on a weekly basis, and keep close communication with the bus companies to closely monitor the operational situation and adjust the services according to passenger demand.
To align with the suspension of face-to-face classes, most of the bus routes serving school areas have also been suspended or have adjusted frequencies until January 3, 2021.
In addition, the frequencies of individual bus routes mainly serving tourists, heading to land boundary control points and the airport have already been adjusted to limited service or have service suspended due to the enhanced anti-epidemic measures on boundary control implemented earlier.
Follow this news feed: East Asia