During the third week of March, the city of Ambato faced the suspension of the city’s public transport service. Unlike other decades, the city functioned relatively normally. Among the aspects to consider is that the Ministry of Education reported that attendance was over 90%, shops and daily tasks continued without further interruption.

What happened can be read from the sui généris that the apparent normality results in the middle of the suspension of the basic service. Today, the fruits of some measures are being reaped, including the sectorization of schools, which allows people to remain (apparently) limited to educational services close to their homes. However, what happens to the remaining 10% of students who reported being absent from face-to-face classes because they live far from the educational institution, remains to be analyzed.

After the meeting with the mayor, the carriers did not reach an agreement and will continue with the suspension of traffic

The normality of services is explained by the distribution of various offices around the city that serve citizens near their homes. Aspects concerning the traffic strike situation should be assessed in order to improve and strengthen the decentralized offices of public and private services.

Alternative bus transportation works adequately, including taxi services and school buses that make up for the absence of mass transit. We must add to this that the number of cars per family has grown significantly in recent years, although population growth has not reached the projections established ten years ago.

But what do the owners of public transport in the city of Ambato claim? As in other cases, the request focuses on increasing the value charged to citizens to access this service. However, the exact calculation of how much profit a unit generates (daily and monthly) is currently a kind of guesswork, as schedules, passenger flow and revenue reporting are impossible when the payment method is fractional currency. In such a way that the main calculation indicator (how much the buses collect per day) is uncertain.

The strike of transporters in Ambat has changed the routine of citizens to get to the work site

Therefore, it is important to learn from other urban spaces where electronic payment has solved the lack of collection data. For example, in several neighboring countries, the ticket is registered with a type of debit card that can be purchased at banks and sales points. The mentioned system allows measuring down to the penny and tracking how much profit or loss is generated by units and transport routes. With this data, common financial bags are created, subsidies are negotiated and taxes are determined.

But the implementation of systems that reveal accurate data requires joint investment with the state, the consent of people capable of thinking about alternatives, and the political will that allows us to bridge differences and discover that what builds cities are smart deals and proposals. We will not progress while unreason, opportunistic calculation, and the desire for theatricality prevail. (OR)