Tonight, the Novelo's Bus Line is back on the road. Yesterday at 5:00 pm, the country's only national bus service shut down all its western runs, to and from Benque Viejo and all points in between. It could have created a national crisis: thousands of commuters stranded and unable to get to their homes or to work. But that crisis was averted because of the collective resources of National Transport Limited, the renegade bus service administered by the Novelo brothers.
And while we call them renegades, they were ready when commuters needed them most, and remarkably, yesterday evening when Novelo's shut down, National mobilized a fleet of busses and managed to move all the commuters westward. Again, this morning, National buses of all colors and fleets, marked and unmarked were back on the Western Highway, filling the massive breech caused by the Novelo's shutdown. Of course, to put this in context, the Novelo's shutdown is because of National and what the Novelo's service calls "sniper runs," illegal, non-permitted runs that the Novelo brothers launched to undermine their former company.
It's an unqualified mess, and tonight the situation continues to develop as the National Transport Board met this evening to make a strong decision against Novelo's. First, Bob Garcia who runs the Novelo's receivership explains why the decided to resume operations at four pm today, and why his company stopped in the first place.
Robert Garcia, Novelo's Bus Company
"Our concern is those people who are running without permits and in fact had no business to be operating on schedules that were in direct conflict with this company, eroding the safety and also eroding the income for Novelo's Bus Line Limited. We met with Transport; we spoke with them about it. We have been reporting these types of actions from the receivership took control of the company and it got progressively worse. Over the past few weeks we tried to work out solutions and it reached the point where I felt that until we arrive at a solution, it would not be wise for us to not continue to operate on those routes.
We have reached what I believe is a fair resolution to the situation. I feel more secure that the commuters won't have to put up with excessive speeding or unsafe practices on the road. We will generate the type of income that I expect to generate and that it had to take this action for that to happen is not the best that could have happened. We regret we had to do what we did and that we inconvenienced people yesterday and part of today but I am glad that we are now able to be able to provide the service that we did prior to yesterday at five o'clock."
Alfonso Noble,
What is the resolution to the problem?
Robert Garcia,
"I'd want to say that there is a press conference, I am told by the Department of Transport, later this evening and in all honesty we have been working together in arriving at a resolution, and I would prefer for them to say what this is. We are reasonably satisfied that the conditions are where we would want it to be. If not now, it will be in the immediate future."
