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AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) is marking His Majesty King Abdullah’s 20th Accession to the Throne anniversary by launching 14 new government services and 135 new buses.
According to a report made available to The Jordan Times, Amman Mayor Yousef Shawarbeh said the services will be available online and the buses will be on the roads by June 22.
He also stated that the last infrastructure-related grant for the Bus Rapid Transit (BTR) will be announced soon.
“It is important to celebrate His Majesty’s Accession to the Throne by translating his visions into realities. We are therefore very excited to be completing an important project [the BTR], and simultaneously launching new projects,” said GAM Spokesperson Mazen Farrajeen.
Transport expert and Jordanian Engineer Association (JEA) board member Mohammed Dawoud said it is “significant that the new buses are placed strategically and in a calculated manner”.
He told The Jordan Times in a phone interview that the new buses could be “an unmissable chance to restore people’s faith in public transport, but to do that, they must be placed in under-serviced areas to fulfil that mission”.
He added that “it would do no good to put them in an already well-serviced area and cause congestion for no reason”.
The public’s “faith in public transport” was also a point raised by JEA member Laila Sbeitan, who said that the people “must trust that a bus will be there at a scheduled time, get them to their destination efficiently and be comfortable” in order for them to replace their car with it.
Walaa Barghouthi, a German Jordanian University student who takes the Amman-Madaba buses on a daily basis, said that the new buses the GAM launched last time were “notably better than the old ones, with air conditioning and WiFi available”.
In addition to the buses and online services, Shawarbeh stated that there will soon be an official announcement regarding a new energy-producing plant in the Ghabi waste dump.
