THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICAS PUBLIC TRANSPORT (September 2024)

If you think long and hard about ‘travel,’ you will come to accept that it is a major aspect of life, impacting daily routines, economic productivity, and even putting pressure on our social life. (We know people who lose friends because they ‘live too far away!’).

Did you know that the average South African spends between 5,200 and 12,400 hours getting to and from work during their life? In addition to the alarming fact that we spend so much time ‘doing it,’ we must also be mindful that we live in a country with major socio-economic disparities, which means the choice between using a car and public transportation is not an option everyone has.

There is an unspoken ‘class system,’ creating a further divide among our people, and we don’t need more of this. The vast majority of South Africans travel via taxi, with about 15 million trips made per day. The next big chunk uses private vehicles.

Cars are seen as the hallmarks of success in South Africa, and sometimes we get our ‘priority spend’ a little mixed up, and this is perhaps why we can see people with BMWs parked outside township homes. In Mzansi, more people own cars than homes.

Cars offer flexibility in scheduling, the ability to choose the music, a greater level of comfort, and privacy. There are about 750,000 kilometres of road linking our country’s 1,000 small towns, 7 major cities, and roughly 1,500 formal and informal townships, meaning that in most cases, there is simply no other way to get to point B without a car. Owning a car represents not only a status symbol but also an essential tool for freedom.

The spanner in the works.

Roughly 35% of our population has access to a private vehicle. Is our goal to increase this? If we scenario plan and factor in every person in South Africa owning a car, the result would be that our cities would grind to a complete halt due to traffic congestion. While stuck in traffic, everyone would have lots of time to think about how broke they are: you see, the cost of purchasing and maintaining a car, getting it insured, and repairs are truly exorbitant. (It is worth mentioning that for some parts of the supply chain, this cost is by design). Don’t forget you still need to pay for fuel!

(Side nugget: You might be thinking that electric cars will help in the long run and maintain the use of private cars. The average cost of a new EV is exorbitant and out of reach for even the South African middle class.)
The simple fact is that if every South African diverted a significant portion of their income for a car, there would be a massive drop in cash flow circulation in the general economy, there would be less money to spend on other things we need like school fees or electricity, and everyone knows that South Africans are struggling with these costs already. If we look at the greater effects, if every person had a car, the financial pressure on our country’s taxes to maintain the required infrastructure would deplete our coffers quickly (even more so than they are now). Environmentally, the CO2 emissions would be devastating.

The Solution

With our population approaching 70 million and the introduction of EVs and climate change legislation, change is inevitable. We believe the peak of private car ownership in South Africa, and their overall ‘use’ in humanity’s history is coming to an end. South Africans will shift from cars to public transport.

Public transportation, encompassing taxis, buses, and trains, will all form a vital component of the South African transport network. It is the only sustainable, and most importantly, equitable option for lower-income individuals at the moment.

You might be pondering the question: “Do we need to get more people to use taxis?” The taxi industry is a less-than-desirable business model, and the taxi associations are a major hurdle, one that must be resolved. There is no other public transport sector in the world associated with mafia-style ‘management’ like the South African Taxi sector. We could quote reasons, but it would derail this article’s primary objective. Let us conclude this particular point by saying that unless the Taxi industry prioritizes collaboration with other transport modes, safety, and the rule of law in their business practices, their very existence is under threat as the government and consumers start to stand up for consumer interests.

South Africa must focus on a fully integrated system that extends outside our main cities and into smaller towns. If we cannot move our nation, we cannot employ, educate, house, or integrate them. We need to shift a significant portion of our population onto rail and buses and also make use of shared-ride solutions.

At the same time, we need to address the challenges that already exist. One is the perception of public transport, where the opinion is that it is unreliable and unsafe. To address this, we need leaders to use it and set an example. David Cameron, the ex-prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Chadchart Sittipunt, the ex-transport Minister of Thailand; and François Hollande, the ex-president of France, are three examples of leaders who used the public transport systems they expected citizens to use too. Sadly, we cannot offer any examples from Africa.

We cannot conclude without making a final point on the subject of cycling and walking. People in the Netherlands are perhaps the most physically active and ‘fit’ people in the world. They spend more than 12 hours a week exercising or playing sports, but they also cycle and walk everywhere! This ‘self-powered transport’ has some wonderful effects: it boosts local businesses (people tend to shop locally), improves health (because we have active bodies), has a positive carbon footprint impact (no fossil fuels being used), and, we believe, adds that final ethical component into the recipe for the perfect transport solution that South Africa so badly needs.

By prioritizing and enhancing all public transportation, South Africa can move towards a more sustainable, equitable, and efficient future, balancing the immediate conveniences of road travel with the long-term benefits of a robust public transport system. Remember, change happens with action, action happens with will!

The End.