Havana’s Ciclobús helps commuters and bikes cross the bay tunnel

Bicycles, scooters and electric motorcycles lined up at the Havana Bay Tunnel for a ride that has become less novelty than necessity. The Ciclobús, run by Havana’s state-run transport company, carried commuters and their vehicles through the underwater passage between Old Havana and eastern Havana, a 3-kilometer route that saves riders from a longer detour around the bay.

The specially fitted bus held about 60 travelers and their rides and made enough trips to move more than 2,000 people a day. Riders boarded by ramp and stayed beside their bicycles or small motorbikes during the trip, because ordinary traffic through the tunnel is not allowed for those vehicles. For many people trying to reach work, school or markets, the service has become one of the few predictable links across a city where mobility has grown uncertain.

That pressure is tied directly to Cuba’s fuel emergency. In February 2026, the government made the state-run Ticket app mandatory for refueling appointments, and drivers said they were being assigned gasoline slots weeks or even months in the future. The ration reported by the AP was 20 liters per vehicle, a limit that has left private transport expensive and unreliable while public transportation remains badly disrupted. Ingrid Quintana said the service mattered because there was no public transportation and she could not afford a taxi, so she used the Ciclobús alongside her husband’s bicycle.

The route also carries the memory of an earlier collapse. The Ciclobús originated in the 1990s during the Special Period, after the Soviet Union fell and shortages hit the island hard. Historical accounts say nearly 700,000 bicycles had been distributed across Cuba by 1994, while Havana’s bus fleet was severely depleted. Fidel Castro’s government pushed bicycling then as a survival measure; the tunnel bus now serves the same function in another crisis, adapting an infrastructure problem into a public lifeline.

The Havana Bay Tunnel itself underscores the scale of the city’s transport strain. Built by a French company between 1955 and 1958 and opened on May 31, 1958, it was designed for heavy traffic and one account says it carries about 32,000 vehicles a day under normal conditions. In April 2026, the United Nations said Cuba’s humanitarian situation was worsening amid the energy crisis and the lingering effects of Hurricane Melissa in October 2025. In that setting, the Ciclobús has become a practical answer to a state system that cannot reliably move its own people.