Old buses from the City of Burgos go off to the Sahara

Author: CIVITAS Support

Posted on: Saturday, January 5, 2008 - 08:56

A second life will be given to the twenty-six buses (12 articulated and 15 standard buses) that are no longer needed in Burgos to provide public transport service since they were replaced by new busses. This new lease on life was given to the busses by a NGO. They will be driven again, but far away from Burgos, in the Sahara, where their principal task will be to carry children from camps to social centres and schools, where they will receive education, or to health centres.

Thanks to the CiViTAS CARAVEL project and the clear idea of renovating the fleet, the old buses from Burgos will be given a new lease on life. Bureaucracy has held up the administration for some months, since ownership of the municipal assets has to be transferred from the Council in order for them to be donated. The buses, before being sent to the Sahara, will be overhauled and any pieces that are in poor condition replaced. However, the Bus Department insists that the buses are in very good working order and have many more kilometres in front of them.At the end of their life span in Burgos, the municipal buses were so old that requests were made for them to appear in television series set in the 1970s in Spain (Cuéntame) or in the Pedro Almodóvar film “Carne Trémula” (“Live Flesh”) in which Penélope Cruz gave birth to a son in 1970.