South Africa’s transport sector is in crisis, African National Congress MP and chairperson of Parliament’s transport portfolio committee Jeremy Cronin said on Tuesday.
”We’ve got a very, very substantial crisis around transport mobility and accessibility,” he told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club meeting.
Cronin criticised government’s transport policies of the 90s, saying these had proved ”disastrous”.
”I’m afraid to say that in the first decade of ANC government, transport was a terribly neglected area.”
A lot of attention had gone into health care, education, housing, and the economy, and transport had tended to be forgotten, he said.
On the taxi recapitalisation programme — a plan to rid the country of its 120 000-strong ageing and dangerous taxi fleet — he said this was ”in the doldrums”.
Government was ”trying to spend R7,7-billion of public money on the taxi sector, and the intended beneficiaries of this public largesse are … telling us to go away, they’re not interested”.
Almost two-thirds of commuters nationally used mini-bus taxis, but the industry was ”controlled by war lordism … [it is] basically a feudal rentier system that is operating here”.
The way the industry operates is illogical and irrational, and it has ”eroded” previously successful city bus services.
Responding to a question on why government did not crack down on ”lawless” taxi operators, he said ”you don’t get there with a blitzkrieg”.
What was needed was to be ”firm and tough”.
On South Africa’s high road death toll — between 14 000 and 17 000 people were killed on the country’s roads last year — he said this is ”one symptom of this problem that we’ve got around infrastructure, mobility, accessibility and transport”.
The fatalities and injuries are costing South Africa R42-billion a year, Cronin said.
Turning to traffic policing, he described the administration of this as ”incoherent”.
Only 2% of traffic offences that should have gone to court actually ended up there.
”There are huge problems on this front,” he said.
The key causes of accidents are speeding and drunk driving, but laboratories that carried out blood testing are backlogged with work.
As a result, authorities are ”not able to crack down massively on drunk driving”.
On passenger rail service Metrorail, Cronin said this is ”starved of resources and under-capitalised”, and has been for decades.
South Africa has ”extremely inadequate public transport”, which is hugely problematic.
”The good news is that in the last few years, government has become more aware that transport is critical … but what remains in deep crisis is the public transport reality,” he said. — Sapa