The country
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation located 90 miles off the south coast of North America with the north shore on the Atlantic Ocean and the south shore on the Caribbean Sea. A socialist country with a land mass of 110,860 square kilometres, it is 1,250 km (780 miles) long and 191 km (119 miles) across its widest point and 31 km (19 miles) across its narrowest point with a population of 11.5 million. The capital is Havana with 2,130,081 residents: Santiago de Cuba and Camaguey are the other two major centres of population.
The country is supported financially by Russia and China; however since early 2020 has been suffering severe hardship with a shortage of basic food, medicine, fuel and gas due to a blockade of shipping by the American Coastguard. This situation is most obvious to tourists travelling by road as coaches and buses are not exempt from queues at filling stations or lack of fuel.
The journey
Havana, located on the north western coast, is the starting place and this journey goes initially west then crosses to the east of the long and narrow country, eventually returning to Havana.
The Omnibus National coach station is on the outskirts of Havana, and is on route to the national highway which provides the only sighting of the ubiquitous "camelo" articulated truck/trailer buses, once a common sight on the streets of Cuba, looking forlorn and abandoned on the roadside.
Viñales which is a small settlement in an area of mogotes, caves, mountains and tobacco plantations, is the most westerly point of the journey. The town contains a small bus depot with a fleet of Diana vehicles in Ómnibus Escolares and standard service livery. A double-decker sightseeing service connects all the major landmarks around the town.
Empresa Provincial De Transporte De La Havana, Yutong ZK6180HGC
The long journey east starts by retracing the outward route towards Havana before circumventing the city via the southern ring road. Eventually the shores of the Caribbean Sea are reached at a place known in modern history as the 'Bay of Pigs' before arriving in the small city of Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos is set around a bay with a grid style road system, and public transport consists of a small fleet of buses from 9m up to 12m in length. The centre of operations is focused on Pasedo El Prado, the longest boulevard in Cuba, although a popular mode of transport is the eight-seater horse & cart taxi. Set five blocks back, the Terminal de Ómnibus on Calle 49 provides a basic building and small yard for express services provided by Omnibus National.
Ómnibus
Nacionales depot in Las Tunas.
Highway 12 provides the next short leg of the journey to Trinidad, a small city with narrow streets and a large pedestrianised historical centre. The limited town bus service is provided by elderly Diana models and a Yutong double-decker sightseeing bus. To the east of the centre, at the junction of Calle Chanzoneta and Calle Amistad, operators use a site which functions both as a terminus and yard. Services operated by TransMetro and heading west start here, and travel through the centre using roadside bus stops for picking up. Omnibus National use the second coach station in the city centre on Calle Gloria, known as Terminal Viazul & Astro, which is a rundown site with booking office and undercover waiting area, on a narrow street not suited to modern day coaches.
The national highway again provides the main route for a journey down the spine of the country. Departing Trinidad, skirting Sancti Spiritus and on to Camagüey. Once again, Camaguey is a town with narrow streets in the historical quarter and only one route for a midi bus service. The newer outskirts that are around the inner southern ring road are served by conventional buses, and slightly further to the south on the road out of the town is a terminus for Omnibus National and for several routes served by the popular trucks with seats in the back. The Provincial Transport Company for Camagüey district transports 110,000 people daily; the operation was expanded in 2016 when 23 new two-door Diana buses were added to urban routes, along with another 15 large buses each capable of carrying between 150 and 160 passengers.
Continuing ever eastward, the uninspiring town of Las Tunas provides the next bus interest. Local services are provided by a mix of vehicles including single decker articulated buses. The main interests are the large Omnibus National depot and, next door, the slightly smaller Transtur depot which are located on the ring road. Moving on to Holguin, the next town of any size, as you enter the town there is yet another large Omnibus National depot and immediately next door, an even larger depot of Omnibus Holguin. From here the route turns south via the birth place of Castro at Biran to Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in Cuba. A day excursion continues the journey east via the highest view point on the island at Gran Piedra and close to the infamous Guantanamo Bay.
Starting the long return journey, the first major town is Bayamo with a small intercity bus terminus on the outskirts. The journey now resumes the route taken on the way out, bypassing Camaguey before overnighting in Sancti Spiritus which is a beautiful small city with a smart fleet of Dianas that are operated by EPT Taxibus. Tourist express routes 16 and 25 operated by Viazul bus from Trinidad serve the city which is home to a new inter-provincial coach station for over 2 million passengers a year. Finally, on to the provincial capital, Santa Clara, that is home to the Monumento Emesto Che Guevara and scene of the famous train bombing during the civil war. Bus services are provided by green and white liveried Cubanicay Omnibus. Just the long drive back to Havana remains.
Cubans drive on the right, however they use the left hand (centre) lane of dual carriageways as the default lane, moving over to allow overtaking. The standard of driving is very high: speed limits are obeyed; indicators appropriately used; potholes dodged and full awareness of all other road users, eg bikes, pedestrians, tractors, horse/oxon & carts and roaming cattle. It is the law that any road vehicle with spare seats must stop and offer a lift to residents standing on the roadside with the exemption of coaches carrying tourists and cars with ‘T’ registration plates. Hitchhiking is a way of life, either using thumb & finger or holding out a few Pesos to indicate a willingness to pay. At major gathering points, marshals are deployed to halt vehicles and control loadings.
The Vehicle Manufacturers
CAISA
Evelio Prieto Guillama Bus Production Company (CAISA), located a few miles west of Havana in Guanajay, manufactures the popular Diana bus which is assembled from imported CKD kits and locally produced GRP panels. The factory currently employs 400 workers and in 2018 built 480 Diana buses.
The origins of the factory can be traced back to the Soviet era with production peaking in the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1980, approximately 15,000 Giron buses based on a Paz 672 chassis were produced. Production ceased in the ‘Special Period’ which is the time in the early 1990s when the Russians departed and left the entire Cuban economy in tatters. Production resumed at the end of 2012 when the Diana bus was launched.
Since 2014 Yutong has jointly developed the 7.5 metre Diana with CAISA, with seating for 25 and room for 18 standees, although, as in the case of all buses operating in Cuba, this is a conservative figure because no bus is ever too full and no one is left standing at a stop. In total, it has produced 1,475 Dianas since 2014.
In 2019 an agreement was signed with the Russian manufacturing group PAZ, a subsidiary of Gaz, to assemble 250 PAZ-32053 chassis with euro 4 engine from imported parts. The finished product will seat 26 with a total capacity of 45. The final product will also be badged ‘Diana’.
EPT
Cubanicay Omnibus outside Hotel Central on Leoncio Vidal Park, Santa Clara.
Yutong
The modern PSV transport scene is dominated by Zhengzhou Yutong Group Co., Ltd. (Yutong). Cuba has been one of its main overseas markets. In 2005, 400 Yutong buses were imported which made it the largest export order in Chinese bus history at that time. By March 2006, the 1000th Yutong bus had arrived and by May 2007, the total ordered had risen to 5348, earning a place in the Guinness Book of Records for Export. Over twenty bus models have been introduced to the island since 2005.
In 2008 Yutong agreed to deliver 200 coach knock-down kits for assembly by CAISA. In 2015 a further order for 1,833 units was received. By 2017 Yutong had launched the first hybrid bus in Cuba and during 2018, 40 hybrids were imported.
B137 111, Transmetro (Empresa de
Transporte de Trabajadores), Yutong ZK6107HA makes a tight turn from Calle Gutiérrez
in the historic centre of Trinidad.
Marcopolo
At an economic summit in 2012 the Brazilian bus manufacturer expressed an interest, with CAISA as a partner, to develop a production site within the Mariel special development zone (ZDE). By 2014 the technical development was well advanced but the project faltered over the availability of international loans.
Hino
The remnants of the once large Hino fleets can still be found throughout the island, or at least purporting to be Hino if the badges are to be believed. In the 1970s, batches of 500 and 550 were delivered and by the mid-1980s most public transport consisted of Hino, a company revered by the Cuban transport industry.
The Operators
Buses appeared in Havana in the 1920s and by 1952 transport in the capital had already consolidated under two large companies: La Cooperativa de Ómnibus Aliados (COA) and Autobuses Modernos S.A. (AMSA). Transport was nationalized in 1959 and both companies came under state control in 1961. The extensive city network continued to expand and by 1984 accounted for nearly 4 million daily journeys. The start of the “special period” in the early 1990s caused havoc with most operators and services disappearing, but eventually led to the introduction in 1994 of the camelos. It was only in 2011 that a gradual recovery of the extensive network began. All operators are under state control and in general, operate identical vehicle types. Some individual companies are only for the Cuban population or a particular profession whilst others provide visitor services.
Empresa Provincial de Transporte de La Habana oversees passenger services in Havana using a fleet of over 900 buses from 16 depots with 1.1m passengers a day. There are fifteen bus terminals, five of them for the main routes and ten for secondary and feeder routes.
Metrobus (Metrobus de La Havana) currently operates 17 main routes in Havana, identified by the letter P (P1 – P16 + PC), using a fleet of single-deck articulated vehicles with a standard fare of 5CUC. This is the successor to the "camelo" network. The company began life in 1994 created from Ómnibus Urbanos de la Habana and used camelos until 2005 when the first articulated buses arrived. The network underwent further consolidation in 2007. Secondary (Guaguas) routes, little changed in decades, use numbers, 1- 490 not in a continuous sequence. Feeder routes begin with the letter A (A1 – A97) whilst local services connecting neighbourhoods begin with the letter C (C1 – C7 + CF9 and CF114).
Metrobus de La Havana 744, Yutong
ZK6180HGC in Calle Industria
Transmetro,
Empresa de Transporte de Trabajadores (Workers Transportation Company),
was created in 2007
and provides services
for tourism employees and associated government organizations across the
country. It operates a total of 998 buses from over 21 bases including 23
routes in the capital and carries over 30,000 passengers per day. The company
supports local services in the province of Santiago de Cuba, where reliable
public transport is an issue, using a fleet of fifty 44 seat buses. National Omnibus Company (Ómnibus Nacionales) (EON) formerly known as Astros, operates 828 coaches reserved exclusively for Cubans. The nationwide network of express services uses a fleet of Yutong coaches in blue livery, less luxurious and often a lot older than those used on tourist express services.
Transgaviota. This company has its origins in the transportation of Soviet advisors in the 1960s. The current board of directors is headed by senior military personnel. The company describes itself as offering a wide range of tourist services although the most visible element is the coach fleet which operates across the country and the (green) open-top sightseeing buses in Cayo Santa Maria and Varadero. As the website no longer functions, gaining an insight to routes and timetables is impossible, but a troll through the Twitter feed gives some indication of the services on offer.
B166 956, Transgaviota Yutong ZK6831HE on a hotel pick-up opposite Central Park in Havana.
Viazul Transporte por Omnibus has provided intercity services throughout the country for nationals and tourists since 1996 with more than 20 daily departures from Havana. Its coaches tend to be acquired second hand and kept for many years. Some of the Mercedes used until recently were twenty plus years old whilst the oldest Yutong dates back thirteen years.
Empresa Transtur S.A., formed on October 13th 1980, is a multi-faceted travel and freight company. The company specialises in in-coming tour groups but also provides a nationwide network of express services which are focused around tourist hotels. To the visitor, it is the most visual of all the companies. Its blue & white livery can be seen on over 1500 coaches and open-top buses that operate from fourteen depots with support from a further seventeen branches and 200 sales offices. Open-top sightseeing buses operate in Guardalavaca, Havana, Jardines Del Rey, Santiago De Cuba and Varadero.
B176
772, Transtur 3694. A Yutong ZK6122H9 on tourist duties in Viñales.
Whilst many may mourn the loss of variety and the mix of curios that once operated on the streets of Cuba, it is fair to say that the Island still holds much interest for the PSV enthusiast. It just requires seeking out. The island is in something of a time warp and, whilst the locals might not agree as they struggle daily with the difficulties that international sanctions bring, the architecture and natural beauty make this a traveller’s haven.
Motor Coach
Industries (MCI) MC-9. Several were donated and are used by sports teams with
baseball being a national sport.
