City ignores taxi industry

I WRITE this with the intention of sounding a warning bell for public transport officials, especially in Cape Town.

This city seems to have no interest in moving forward in a collaborative manner to serve all of its citizens, but has an agenda to move only in a direction that appears to serve the city.

So often the running commentary from the pessimists is that there is something wrong with the taxi business, and that it has a negative impact.

They are quite mistaken; the minibus taxi industry grows from strength to strength and has become the backbone of the Cape Town economy. Spatial planning of the past government appears to be driving the same mentality of the present Cape Town government.

Yet, public transport is being rolled out according to a plan, set in stone, that will not service all of this city.

I don’t dispute the intention to develop the nodes and economic zones around public transport. I question the intention to empower communities and recognise the true developers of commuter markets.

In his letter to Weekend Argus last Saturday, Richard Walker, regional manager of Metrorail, made some key points that citizens need to be aware of about their interaction to collaborate with the city. These include:

A memorandum of action between the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) and the City of Cape Town exists to maintain rail as affordable transport for the disenfranchised.

19 projects exist under the Land Transport Advisory Board and Inter-modal Planning Committee in terms of collaboration and strategic business planning.

Projects are being hampered by the city council’s own restructuring processes.

The city council “is off to a poor start to integrate public transport: operating the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) services parallel to existing rail corridors (in defiance of the intention to introduce feeder services)”.

The “recently revised fares forcing poor commuters from the metro south-east corridor to spend more of their already constrained disposable income on transport”.

To continue on this path is not sustainable nor in commuters’ interest.

The same holds true for the minibus taxi industry.

Irrespective of the argument regarding public transport strategy, other stakeholders in public transport have precisely the same issues with the city when it comes to an inclusive transport strategy.

The city council is not flexible on their strategy to integrate public transport and the inclusivity statements made by the city council have clear guidelines on who should be excluded.

Who exactly represents the interest of the disenfranchised majority who battle for affordable transport costs? It would appear there is greater interest by the city council to address the needs of those who are least likely to use multi-transport travel in their daily work or school day.

The minibus taxi industry is hands down the greatest transporter of commuters at the most affordable rate but is excluded from the conversation of inter-modal transport.

When the city council speaks about the inclusion of the taxi industry, it’s on their terms for a select few who serve a fraction of the market.

The city council operates the MyCiTi service at a loss for the benefit of who exactly?

The question of subsidies is a conversation to be had with all transport operators, except the taxi industry which does the bulk of the transporting of commuters. In which business model does this make any sense?

Richard Walker indicates there appears to be poor communication between the city council and its own officials, which echoes what we have been saying for many years.

Grant Haskin of the African Christian Democratic Party spoke out against the manner in which city council officials refuse to act without instruction from their political masters, the DA. We maintain that city council officials and party leaders take the same stance when public transport is under discussion.

City council processes are slow and self-serving and the urgency to address citizens’ transport appears to be stagnating, except when it is driven via the MyCiTi programme.

Minibus taxi operators need to make their voice heard, to challenge the agenda of a city council that speaks to everyone except the hardest workers in road-based public transport. The city council’s agenda does not even recognise the role of the minibus taxi industry. We maintain that Cape Town wouldn’t even be able to turn on the lights without the taxi industry. If our industry caught the flu for even one day, the city would be brought to its knees.

Perhaps it’s time the mayor speaks to the taxi industry and make the same time available for her own citizens that she affords to climate change concerns. It won’t be long before the taxi industry takes the same stance as mayor Patricia de Lille, by ceasing to talk and escalating its role in the city with or without regulation.