Rabat – Meknes’ communal council has voted on July 27 to unilaterally terminate its delegated management contract with City Bus, ending the company’s near two-decade run as the city’s main urban transport operator after months of service collapse and a five-week strike that left the network at a near-total standstill.
The decision was approved during an extraordinary session held in mid-July, following weeks of mounting frustration among the city’s roughly 700,000 residents. Council members cited the deterioration of service quality and City Bus’ failure to meet its contractual obligations as grounds for the termination.
The breakdown reached its peak when City Bus employees went on strike for five consecutive weeks, demanding three months of unpaid wages. The walkout brought the network to a standstill, forcing thousands of commuters, including students, workers, civil servants, and patients, to rely on taxis at much higher cost.
According to the commune, the termination came only after other options were exhausted. In a statement issued days before the vote, the council presidency said it had handled the matter “with the highest degree of responsibility and vigilance,” in line with its constitutional obligation to preserve public services and residents’ right to transport that respects their dignity.
The commune said it initially opted for dialogue over confrontation. In 2020, it approved a seven-year extension of City Bus’ contract, which had run since 2005, pushing its expiry to September 2027, in exchange for a promised investment plan covering fleet renewal, network modernization, service upgrades, and improved accessibility for people with disabilities. It also issued repeated formal notices and pursued legal proceedings against the company as service continued to deteriorate.
Alongside the termination, the council approved the creation of a local development company (société de développement local, or SDL) to take over management of the city’s bus network.
The legal and regulatory documents required to establish the new entity were also approved during the same session.
Meknes is not the first Moroccan city to cut ties with the operator. City Bus, whose parent holding company ran roughly 1,000 buses across multiple cities including Meknes, Fez, Tetouan, El Jadida, and Oujda, also saw its contract terminated by Fez’s communal council in February 2025 over similar complaints. These include an aging, poorly maintained fleet, unpaid wages, and employee strikes.
A new fleet of buses, financed by the interior Ministry, is expected to arrive in Meknes by early 2027. In the meantime, the commune says it will repair a number of existing vehicles and bring in used buses from another city to ease pressure on commuters while the new operator is set up.
For now, the residents of Morocco’s sixth-largest city are left to navigate the gap with whatever transport they can find.
