Transport Bureau (DSAT) Director Kelvin Lam Hin San has announced that Macau recorded a daily average of around 626,000 public bus passengers last month, a year-on-year increase of 0.5 percent compared to the same month in pre-pandemic 2019.
Lam made the remarks during a press conference on Friday after chairing a regular meeting of the government-appointed Traffic Consultative Council at his bureau.
Lam also noted that the city recorded a total of over 210 million public bus passengers last year, representing a daily average of around 590,000 passengers.
According to DSAT data on its website, the city’s daily average number of public bus passengers reached 627,200 in 2019, based on which, last year’s daily average passenger number returned to around 94 percent of the 2019 level.
Last year, Macau saw the highest daily number of public bus passengers on September 23, at 695,963, while 2019’s highest daily numbers of passengers stood at 762,710, on October 4, 2019, according to the DSAT data.
Meanwhile, Lam also said that the city recorded 569 traffic accidents involving public buses for which the respective bus drivers were to blame, representing a 25 percent increase from the 454 cases in 2022, but 22 percent down from the 736 cases in pre-pandemic 2019.
Lam pledged that the government will carefully study the causes of the city’s traffic accidents involving public buses with the aim of coming up with effective measures to lower such cases.
A public bus drives past a traffic light-controlled crossing on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, the city’s main thoroughfare, yesterday. – Photo: Tony Wong
Govt proposes 10-pct taxi fare hike
Meanwhile, Lam also underlined that for the time being the government still does not have a schedule as to when a taxi fare hike will get off the ground.
Lam also reaffirmed that the government has determined that the 18 percent fare hike that had been recently proposed by the taxi sector would be too steep, because of which the government was instead proposing that taxi fares should only be increased by around 10 percent, the transport chief said.
According to Lam, the Transport Bureau is proposing to raise the flagfall to 21 patacas from the current 19 patacas for the first 1,600 metres.
The bureau is also proposing an increase in incremental charges.
Currently, the incremental fare is two patacas for every 240 metres after the first 1,600 metres. The bureau is proposing that the incremental fare will be two patacas for every 220 metres after the first 1,600 metres, Lam said.
According to Lam, the bureau is also proposing that passengers will have to pay more after requiring the cabbie to wait at some point during the ride.
Currently, passengers have to pay two patacas for every minute of waiting time. The bureau is proposing that the two patacas will be charged for every 55 seconds, Lam said, adding that this proposal aims to encourage cabbies to be more willing to travel to the city’s old quarters to pick up passengers.
In addition, according to Lam, the bureau is also proposing a three-pataca increase in the additional fare charged on passengers who take a taxi ride from the airport, the Taipa Ferry Terminal, the Macau-side checkpoint zone of the Hengqin joint checkpoint, or the Macau checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB), from the current five patacas to eight patacas.
Lam said that the proposed three-pataca increase aims to encourage cabbies to travel to these checkpoints to pick up prospective clients.
The city’s taxi fares were last raised in July 2017, when the flagfall was raised from 17 patacas to the current 19 patacas for the first 1,600 metres.
Before the fare hike at that time, the incremental fare was two patacas for every 260 metres after the first 1,600 metres.
