I never expected traveling on the buses of the Saudi Arabian Public Transport Company (SAPTCO) to be so bad or the services offered by the company to be so primitive. As the sole company with the right of domestic land transport, SAPTCO’s services to its passengers should be much better.
“Better” is not a word you would use to describe the service, especially by those who have to use it to go to places where there are no airports or who cannot afford the price of an air ticket.
I made it a point not to judge SAPTCO before traveling more than once on its buses, but each experience was worse than the one before. During one of them, I traveled to Qunfudah, a town on the south coast of Jeddah, which, because of its vitality and location, is set to become a future investment haven.
The drama began at the company’s main terminal in Jeddah. You are hardly able to walk inside because of the crowd. If you want to sit down, you will find the lounge too small and the chairs old and cracking to bits. It was as if you were in a bus station in a remote and poverty-stricken Third World village, but not Jeddah, the bustling city where visitors never stop coming, to say nothing of those who come for Haj or Umrah.
You find yourself in a long queue with no beginning or end. There are very few staff selling tickets and when you reach them after a long wait, you see anger and annoyance in their faces. They accept no comment or request from you. They use old computers that need a lot of maintenance.
The bathrooms in the terminal are another story. They are so filthy to be suitable for human use. If the main terminal in Jeddah is this bad, what do you expect the situation to be in the other stations on the road? I stopped at two of them along the southern coastal road and simply cannot find words to describe them.
If you are lucky to get a seat on the bus, your first priority will be to wipe it clean so I advise all travelers to take cleaning materials with them. It is not unusual to find a cockroach under your seat traveling on the same journey.
If you are lucky, you are on a bus with minimum air conditioning; otherwise you suffer from overcrowding and sizzling heat as if you were a sardine in a tin. When you get onto the desert road, you find that the air conditioners no longer work and when you attempt to complain to the driver, the sweat on his face and forehead silences you at once. You will see in the buses an empty space for a video but in the space are piles of old newspapers. The TV set is turned off. There is also a No Smoking sign near the front of the bus, which apparently was meant for passengers but not the driver.
I feel I have not said a great deal but I can conclude by saying: I seek refuge with Allah from SAPTCO.
