Joburg bus service a ‘mediocre disgrace’

The stalled Rea Vaya bus service has added to the travel woes of Joburg commuters. Photo: Itumeleng English

The stalled Rea Vaya bus service has added to the travel woes of Joburg commuters. Photo: Itumeleng English

Published Mar 14, 2015

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Johannesburg - Joburg’s record when it comes to public transport is a disgrace. Incompetence and mismanagement of the municipal bus service has reduced it to a mediocre, underperforming embarrassment.

This is the view of transport analyst Dr Vaughan Mostert after commuters were left stranded by Joburg’s bus services – services that were hard hit by strikes, accidents and cut routes this year.

The city’s Rea Vaya service has lost about R24 million a month because of service suspension. Putco has announced route cuts and Metrobus overcrowding and road incidents has forced commuters to find alternative means of transport.

“We could be well on the way to achieving most of the benefits claimed for Rea Vaya by fixing the existing Metrobus service,” Mostert said.

“The bus system needs to introduce new routes, better frequencies and integrated route and fare systems, balancing subsidies and jacking up information and marketing.”

But Putco has cut routes and said this week it is shutting down services for “certain loss-making tender contracts that expire on March 31”.

This will affect services in Mamelodi, Meyerton and Katlehong, Vosloorus and Thokoza, said spokeswoman Kim Polley.

While Putco is reducing its routes, Metrobus drivers have come under fire for dangerous overcrowding. A few weeks ago, a bus teetered off the Queen Elizabeth bridge in Braamfontein after crashing.

The bus ploughed into the side of the bridge and broke through a large section, crashing to the bottom of the structure, metres away from Park Station.

The nose of the vehicle was planted firmly into the ground and emergency officials were seen standing near the broken glass and cement around it.

Metrobus has 412 vehicles, a quarter of Putco’s 1 900, in its fleet and is not yet structured and licensed to deploy additional buses, said Metrobus spokeswoman Esther Dreyer.

However, she insisted the overcrowding is caused by a higher number of passengers on a route and not the number of buses allocated at a certain time.

Meanwhile, the suspension of the Rea Vaya service has resulted in a daily loss of R800 000 to the company, Piotrans.

Spokesman Dumisani Mntambo said they hoped the dismissal of the 158 drivers who embarked on an illegal strike would discourage employees from future unlawful strikes and work stoppages.

Mntambo said it was hoped that services would return to normal soon.

Paul Browning, public transport analyst, said strikes are highly damaging to both the image, usage and finances of public transport.

“One reason for bus services being in shambles now is after approval by cabinet in March 2007 of the national public transport strategy, all attention and billions of rand had been on bus rapid-transit systems, which are taking far longer to implement than had been planned. While this has been going on, services such as Metrobus and Putco have been largely left untouched.”

He said what was needed was a comprehensive integrated bus-based public transport network covering the whole of the city.

“The development of the network must not be hung-up on a hi-tech vision requiring huge infrastructure investment,” said Browning.

The Rea Vaya bus rapid-transit system carries an average of 45 000 week-day passengers. These numbers are below the anticipated 85 000 week-day passengers for Joburg .

He said this was because of a slower-than expected rate of passengers transitioning from other modes of transport to the bus rapid-transit systems as the full integration of rapid- public transport networks had not yet materialised.

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Saturday Star

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