There was a time when the Ezroy Millwood-led National Transport Co-operative Society (NTCS) could, and did, stop thousands of persons in the Corporate Area from reaching their destinations.

The spontaneous bus strikes of the immediate pre-Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) era are now stuff of folklore, but those who lived through them will remember the sea of persons left standing in key centres, such as Half-Way Tree, as the co-operative's buses stopped running at, it sometimes seemed, the drop of a hat.

Those seemingly arbitrary actions, coupled with the horribly overcrowded buses in the first place, did not endear the tough-talking Millwood and his organisation to the public. So, it is unlikely that there will be much sympathy for the remnants of the once near monopolistic fleet at reports in The Gleaner yesterday that it is in danger of being closed.

Millwood said that many of the remaining NTCS buses have seen daily intake plummet from $25,000 to $9,000, leaving individual operators unable to service loans and meet spiralling operating costs.

This has resulted from JUTC buses on the same routes as the NTCS units and, although it was unsaid, no doubt the omnipresent 'robots'.

Millwood did not make an appeal to the public to support his flagging cause, that being left to the lawyers who will press his case at the highest level after the Government winning a 10-year legal battle in May. However, we seriously doubt that he would have found much support among the commuting public.

NTCS buses rebranded

The NTCS buses may have been rebranded 'executive' transportation, and often do provide an air-conditioned service that the JUTC does not. However, in far too many cases, the behaviour of the drivers and conductors is far from being at the executive level. In fact, it is eerily reminiscent of the 1990s, where disorder was the order of the transportation day.

The JUTC has, of course, had its unscheduled service interruptions, those coming mainly in the earliest days of the takeover when many of the distinctive white buses were targeted by hooligans. However, the lack of public interest in Millwood's cause is testament to the tremendous improvement over the NTCS that the JUTC has been.

With all its losses, we do not believe that there are many who would wish to see the back of the present urban centre transportation system.

And we do not. The business of running an organised bus system, which will transport persons for work, educational purposes and leisure, simply cannot be left to a loose aggregation of private operators.

There is, obviously, no going back. Not only that; we also suspect that a coexistence is also unsustainable. And we suspect that, whichever way the appeal goes, the old bus system will go the way of the Jamaica Omnibus Service and, before them, the 'country buses' that once ruled the rural-urban transportation system.

It will either disappear totally, or very few determined relics of an era past will press on.

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