Cape Town’s ailing public-transport system is set for a dramatic overhaul as the state ”takes ownership” of taxi routes, the Cape Times reported on its website on Tuesday.
The number of trains are to increase from 80 to 108, bus subsidies will be raised from R350-million to R500-million and the minibus taxi industry will be integrated into the public transport system.
Cape Town is also poised to form a metropolitan transport authority to iron out the fragmentation of the transport system, caused by national, provincial and local government authorities controlling different segments of the system.
The city will also get an integrated ticket system where commuters buy one ticket to ride on a bus, a taxi or a train.
These were some of the moves revealed by provincial transport and public works minister Marius Fransman, who spoke at the Cape Town Press Club on Monday. He was speaking on changes to the city’s transportation network in preparation for hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup semifinal.
Fransman said the provincial government had decided that public transport would be the ”critical path-breaker” to economic growth in the province.
”The drive for 2010 is to create a long-lasting legacy for public transport. What this will require over the next few years is more certainty, more predictability and less populism,” Fransman said.
The authorities, he said, also had to provide a workable alternative to private vehicles.
Regarding the taxi industry, Fransman said this would be transformed ”from being unregulated to regulated, from being unlawful to lawful, from a lack of tax compliance to tax compliant”.
Currently, taxi routes do not belong to government, and the taxi industry dictates who will operate on certain routes.
”We have to turn that around. We must make sure that the state takes ownership of the routes.”
However, Stephen Williams, chairperson of the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata), told the Mail & Guardian Online on Tuesday that ”[Fransman] must consult with the taxi industry if he is going to do things like that.”
Williams said he was concerned about the impact the proposed overhaul would have on individual taxi drivers.
”This is about my money and my business; I bought it, I built it. The taxi industry works on individuals, now how will we make our money?”
”Your business is your business; if the government is going to control it that means the government is going to regulate my money, and that means I am an employee of the government and it pays me a salary … I am not satisfied about that,” Williams said.
He added that Cata and other organisations were not pleased about the taxi recapitalisation process in general, and the amount that taxi drivers were being offered for their vehicles. He said they would take their concerns up with Jeff Radebe, the Minister of Transport.
”[Cata is] a small fish. There are a lot of taxi associations in the Western Cape, and we as taxi owners must stand up and address what the government wants to do,” he said. – Sapa and Staff Reporter