In Shanghai more than 17,000 buses carry passengers around the town every day and a mix of government and private bus companies has been serving the city well. But recently some of the private companies have been stretched to make their routes profitable or provide an adequate service.

On April 1, the private bus company Huihua closed down and its five bus routes were taken over by the State-owned bus company, the Shanghai Ba-shi Public Transportation Group.

Route 864, which runs between Hankou Road in central Shanghai's Huangpu district and Longhua Airport in Xuhui district, was the first private bus company taken over by the government group - since early March it has been run by the No.2 Bus Company under the Shanghai Ba-Shi. Another subsidiary of the State-owned group, the No.4 Bus Company, is now running Route 944 (between Lingshi Road in Zhabei district and Maotai Road in Changning district), Route 197 (between Huaxin town and Xujing East Station in Qingpu district), Route 803 (between Shanghai South Railway Station in Xuhui district and Jinhui Road in Minhang district), and Route 341 (between Shanghai South Railway Station in Xuhui district and Wanyuan Road in Minhang district).

The Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority explained that private bus companies had to meet specific criteria before their routes could be taken over by the government group. "It's essential that private bus companies make profits, so when they are not it is natural for them to want to give up these routes," said a man named Deng, a spokesman for the Transportation Management Division with the authority.

Fewer passengers

A major reason for Huihua's losses was that its bus routes attracted few passengers. "Ever since metro became the popular form of public transport for the city in the late 1990s, fewer and fewer people have been taking buses. This year sees 9 million passengers a day using the metro but only a fraction of that number use buses," Deng said.

Huihua is just one of many bus companies that have been affected by the metro and making things worse was that most of its routes covered Shanghai's inner areas and overlapped with metro lines. Most of the remaining private bus companies (there are about 10), on the other hand, operate routes on the city's outskirts where there are far fewer metro lines and stations. Because of this most of these bus companies' routes still attract commuters and remain profitable.

But if any of the companies indicate they wanted to pull out, Deng said there were routine procedures to handle the situation. Bus routes that start and end within a district then become the responsibility of the district government and will be transferred to the State-run bus company registered in the district. If the routes cross districts over the city, the Transport and Port Authority is responsible.

Ten months before Huihua stopped that route it began preparing for the handover. It filed a statement with the Transport and Port Authority on June 5 that it would stop operating the Minhang Route 18 on June 10 and the Minhang district government handed the responsibility for the route to Minhang Keyun, a State-owned bus company in the district.

The Minhang Route 18 had been attracting few passengers. The Shanghai Oriental Morning Post quoted a company human resources employee as saying that this was because there were few residential areas along the route and fuel costs were rising constantly. As a result, every bus was losing about 400 yuan ($64.4) every day. In July, Huihua also stopped running Route 804 which runs between Baizhang Road in Minhang district and the Huajin Neighborhood in Xuhui district.

The lack of profit on these routes also meant that the bus companies could not offer employees competitive wages. In the 1990s private bus companies were encouraged to set up and run services in Shanghai's newly developing areas. The State-owned bus companies were in a financial crisis and found it difficult to offer more routes. Private bus company drivers in those days were making more money than the drivers with State-owned companies. But this has changed again in recent years. Today a driver working for a major State-owned bus company can expect an annual salary of about 60,000 yuan but a driver working for Huihua will be paid under 50,000 yuan.

This has driven many of the private bus company drivers to look for work with State-owned companies. In March alone, more than 50 employees left Huihua to join State-owned bus companies.

Driver shortage

The exodus of drivers meant the company had to reduce the frequency of its bus routes and this vicious circle saw more passengers giving up and rejecting the prospect of longer waits for buses.

Huihua's Route 864, for example, usually kept people waiting for 50 minutes, sometimes more than an hour, and spurred scores of complaints from angry passengers. When the Global Times visited the bus terminal on Hankou Road on a Tuesday morning, there was notice advising that from March 8 buses would arrive every half an hour during peak hours. For the rest of the day buses would arrive every 40 or 50 minutes.

At that stage it was about 11:10 am and a bus had stopped at 11:00 am. Three women arrived at the bus stop to discover the next bus would not arrive before 11:40 am. They were all regular passengers on this route. "The buses were great years ago. The previous company was run from Macao and the buses were comfortable and the service was good. But in recent years it has just gone downhill," Zhao Heping, a 60-something retired teacher, told the Global Times.

The other two also complained about the delays. "I don't use the bus during peak hours, so that doesn't make a difference to me. There should certainly be more buses," one said.

She had to travel to Longhua Airport, and the other woman was going to Xujiahui. They resigned themselves to a long wait - unlike a man called David from Xiamen, Fujian Province who was visiting Shanghai. He looked at the timetable and gave up straightaway. "I haven't found any buses round here that go straight to my destination, so I will take the metro. It's a pity because I wanted to ride on a bus so that I could look at the city," he said.

Opposite this bus stop is an office of the No.2 Bus Company. Wang Aiping is a bus inspector on Route 49 (a model bus route noted for good service) and she told the Global Times that her team had "helped take over" the service since it was geographically close to Route 864. "We have attached four buses and four drivers from our own team to serve Route 864. I see many regular passengers have already taken a photo of the timetable to replan their schedules," Wang said.