Assessing the Potential of Suroboyo Bus to be Used as Public Transportation

Transportation is one of the important needs in a metropolitan city. Therefore, as the second biggest city in Indonesia, Surabaya City must provide an adequate public transportation for its citizen. Unfortunately for so long the availability of public transportation across the city that is integrated, comfortable, safe, punctual, and affordable is still lacking. With the vision to attract more people to use public transportation and to care more to the environment, in 2018 Surabaya City Government provided Suroboyo Bus as a free service for public. Suroboyo Bus that has 3 routes across the city is not categorized as public transportation because it has red police number, not yellow police number characterizing public transportation in Indonesian system, so it is categorized as an unpaid government-owned bus. Instead of paying bus fare, Suroboyo Bus requires riders to collect certain number of plastic bottles to use the service. The use of plastic bottles in the use of Suroboyo Bus raises positive and negative aspects. Many people who want to use, often cannot be flexible to use because of the unavailability of plastic bottles. Therefore, paying for bus tickets needs to be considered as a solution. When operated with no fare, the operation of Suroboyo Bus depends entirely on the City Government budget. With the introduction of fare, there will be a reduction in the City Government budget. This paper presents the results of a study to assess the potential of Suroboyo Bus to be used as a paid public transportation. Three aspects have been considered including market, technical, and financial aspects. The results show that this change has the potential to reduce the City Government's budget in supporting the operation of Suroboyo Bus by 23.59% during this pandemic.