City transport strategies need to integrate minibus taxis

The annual transport conference held last week at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria had one significant difference from those of recent years: while for the better part of a decade there has been a special workshop on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) — the high-quality bus service such as Rea Vaya in Johannesburg and MyCiTi in Cape Town — that dedicated day was absent from the 2018 conference.

One of the reasons may be the kind of view recently expressed by Gauteng roads and transport MEC Ismail Vadi when he presented his budget vote speech: “I must register my grave concern over the slow pace of implementation of the BRT systems in all three Gauteng metropolitan municipalities. The implementation timelines are continuously shifting further in time and the ridership levels are not increasing. The ongoing delays in launching the new phases of the system and the low ridership must be attended to as a matter of urgency.”

It might be worth taking a look at the background to BRT implementation. In March 2007 Cabinet approved a public transport strategy. This envisaged that in SA’s 12 biggest cities, new integrated rapid public transport systems would be established. These would be planned by the cities, and the operations contracted out.

They would have at their core a number of BRT routes, which would use large highcapacity buses. They would be complemented by local bus routes using smaller vehicles feeding in to the BRT route at specially designed interchanges. The systems would be implemented in stages, but would be completed in all 12 cities by 2020.

We are now in 2018 and the only cities to have introduced even a semblance of a network are Johannesburg and Cape Town. There are two BRT lines operating in Pretoria, and Nelson Mandela Bay has just started to operate its first such line. That is all that has been achieved in the decade or more since the strategy was approved by Cabinet.

It is therefore not surprising that the basis of the strategy is being questioned. The ongoing need for operating subsidies is a major factor, but there are also concerns about the ability of city planners to implement the schemes. One of the reasons for the slow implementation pace has been opposition from the established taxi operators.

The 2007 strategy envisaged that in the 12 big cities the minibus taxi would disappear and be replaced by buses. Taxi operators would be offered shareholdings in the new operating companies. To make this process easier, the enabling legislation (the National Land Transport Act of 2009) allowed for the first contracts to be negotiated with existing operators rather than being put out to competitive tender.

Despite this, the taxi operators have been hard to convince. In all of the cities, including those where BRT lines have been introduced, taxis still carry by far the largest number of public transport users. This does not mean the standards of taxi operation are acceptable. There was a bitter irony in a recent report in The Herald in Port Elizabeth, which described how a pedestrian walking in the dedicated busonly BRT lane on Stanford Road had been run over and killed – by a minibus taxi!

There is considerable concern about the way taxis appear to flout the traffic laws with impunity. By way of response the taxi operators say that despite carrying the majority of commuters, they are given no dedicated taxi lanes.

The 2007 public transport strategy gave rise to the understandable view on the part of municipal authorities that there was little point in trying to tackle the challenges posed by taxis because when the strategy was implemented, they would disappear. That has not happened. It is clear that the taxi will be with us for a long time to come.

It would perhaps be prudent for the authorities, while not taking their eye off the longterm vision, to consider how taxi operations can be made more orderly. Stricter law enforcement is one clear need, but there is a need to encourage better collective management by the operators.

We might perhaps hope that the 2019 transport conference will include a workshop to consider the ongoing role of the minibus taxi.

THE 2007 STRATEGY ENVISAGED THAT IN THE 12 BIG CITIES THE MINIBUS TAXI WOULD DISAPPEAR AND BE REPLACED BY BUSES AND OPERATORS WOULD GET [SHARES] IN ALL OF THE CITIES, INCLUDING THOSE WHERE BRT LINES HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED, TAXIS STILL CARRY THE LARGEST NUMBER OF TRANSPORT USERS