Capital Area Bus Reducing Service To Save Costs

Strætó, the company which runs bus service for the greater Reykjavík area, has announced that they will be reducing service on several routes due to financial losses during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Icelandic version of the announcement goes into greater detail, saying that the company has seen a reduction of revenue by 1.5 billion ISK over the past two years. As such, they will need to reduce services in order to save some 275 million ISK in 2022.

Specifically, “the last trips in the evenings are canceled on routes 7,11,12,15,19,22,23,28,35 and 36 and route 24 will drive every 30 minutes all day instead of every 15 minutes during rush hours”, the announcement states, with more details within the announcement itself.

Hjálmar Sveinsson, the chair of Strætó and the city councilperson for the Social Democrats, told Vísir that these changes, while unfortunate, will only be temporary.

“This is in fact just being done so that Strætó can continue to do its job, which is for the most part moving people,” he said. “It is of course temporary, will be in place until expenses level out and will be reviewed again in the autumn.”

Numerous regular passengers of the bus service have expressed disappointment with the decision, and Hjálmar says he is sympathetic to their grievances.

“I understand it quite well,” he said. “This is naturally a great disappointment. We aim to improve public transit and that policy has not changed. We’re just in a time right now where Strætó needs to reduce services a bit.”

As such, regular bus users will have to weather these changes until September at the earliest, and hope that public transport services return to normal after that time.