To Bee or not to Bee

Getting around without your own wheels is a real mission. A highway mom has decided it’s time Hillcrest and the surrounding areas had their very own bus service, writes Liz Clarke.

You can’t miss Lydia Bird’s buses. They come complete with large buzzy bees flying around on their bright, snappy livery.

“I’ve always loved bees – they’re amazing creatures,” says the entrepreneur behind the new Bee Line bus service, which has been operating since August last year in the Highway area. She even has a model of one on her desk given to her as a good luck mascot by her mom.

But as Lydia explains, it hasn’t been the easiest of rides. It took 10 months of fighting her way through a mountain of red tape at the Department of Transport just to get to first base. “I’m the tenacious sort,” she says. “I certainly wasn’t going to give up the battle without a hearing date. Eventually I got one, and the permits followed.”

Since then this single mother of two, who keeps her two buses, one big, one small, on her property and runs the office from home, has been trying to spread the bus message.

“New ventures take time – that’s the big lesson I’ve learned,” she says with a wry smile. “Everyone I speak to thinks it’s an amazing idea, but getting people to use the service on a regular basis is another thing. We are not like England or Europe, which have had a commuter ethos for years. Here it is a foreign concept. If you haven’t got wheels of your own, you simply stay put, which is sad.”

The plus side, though, is that families of schoolgoing children are starting to see the benefit of having a bus service that will take their youngsters to school – “get them there on time and bring them home.”

Lydia has restricted her school runs to high school children in the area – “watching over small children would be too much of a responsibility” – but is looking to transport pupils who live in the Hillcrest, Kloof, Botha’s Hill and Waterfall region to and from schools in Durban.

“With so many people moving to the Upper Highway area, I believe it could become a popular service.”
Although the bus company has been operating for just five months, Lydia says the interest is growing, albeit slowly. “The one-off charters are going well. I think the drink-driving risks have made people a lot more aware of how they are going to get to and from a function. Weddings, office parties, stags’ and hens’ nights make up the bulk of our passengers.”

But Lydia would like to do a lot more, particularly for the elderly, who often can’t get around, seldom venturing further than their front gates. “I have kept the fares as low as possible at R1 a kilometre, which is a lot less than the AA rates, so I’m hoping we can encourage the older passengers to use us to go to places like the Pavilion and Gateway for say, shopping, lunch and perhaps an early movie.”

Sadly she has had to put on hold the daily runs starting from Waterfall and going to the city because there wasn’t enough support. “Unfortunately, with only four to six passengers a day, it wasn’t worth it. But I am hoping things will change. I’ve just got to be patient.”

Hoping that the project will grow and prosper are drivers, hired locally, like Tornado Ngcobo.
“I love my job,” he says. “It’s good to meet different people. I try to make each journey happy and friendly. ”
With so much congestion on the roads, and getting worse, Lydia’s idea is well worth supporting. I know I will! C

Useful contacts: If you would like to know more about the bus service, e-mail Lydia at beelinebus@telkomsa.net