Suroboyo Bus — Plastic-Bottle Fare Transit

Surabaya's bus still trades bottles for rides — but not on board anymore. Since 2022 riders redeem plastic at drop-off posts, and 2025 reporting described rising subsidy costs against ridership officials called stagnant.

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Suroboyo Bus opened in April 2018 as a city bus line whose signature draw was trading plastic bottles for a ride — three large bottles, five medium ones, or ten cups bought a two-hour ticket — run by Surabaya's Transportation Department under a buy-the-service contract with operators including Perum DAMRI. Since May 2022 that swap has moved off the bus: riders now hand bottles to staffed exchange posts around the city, or bank points through the GoBis app, for a travel voucher, while the standard cash fare (Rp 5,000 general, Rp 2,500 students) does most of the work of keeping the line running. The bus network itself has grown steadily — from 3 routes and 8 buses at launch to 15 routes and 39 buses by April 2025, and to roughly 873,000 recorded trips by October 2019 — but riders still pay a higher cash fare than in some other Indonesian cities because Surabaya has not matched their level of central-government fare subsidy, and 2025 reporting described subsidy costs climbing against ridership that local officials called stagnant.