Public Transport Problems

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The growth of the South African middle class has seen a rise in personal vehicle sales as more people become affluent. Public transport service providers have to compete with the flexibility and freedom found in owning a vehicle – you can start it whenever you want and you can take you wherever you want. However, this has resulted in congestion in the country’s metropolitan cities as the existing road networks do not have enough capacity to handle the traffic volumes. Traffic volumes continue to rise at a rate of 7% per year in the Pretoria-Johannesburg corridor. This is compounded by maintenance backlogs and frequent power cuts which often leave traffic lights dysfunctional for weeks on end. Peak hour delays have become a common event on …show more content…

With at least 25% of the South African population using taxis affordability becomes a common deciding factor when faced with choosing the mode of transport that one uses. A sad fact about the public transport sector in this country is that it is too expensive for the people it is meant to service – the poor and unemployed. Take the example of a mother travelling at 18:00 with three children from Noord taxi rank to Diepsloot via Alexander township. The only option she has at that particular time is to take a minibus taxi as buses do not run that late and trains are generally unsafe for a female traveller, let alone one with children. The average cost of a trip on a minibus taxi is about R7.50 per person. So the mother with her three children will have to part with R30 going to Alexander. There are no half fares in taxis. The train would have cost her a little less, say R20. And if she needs to proceed to Diepsloot, then we add another R30. That’s R60 for the in-trip. That should put her out by R120 by the time they return home. This is often a choice between travelling and going to bed …show more content…

The impact of heavy freight vehicles on the roads is increasing the cost of maintenance and road upgrades as traffic demands grow. Naturally the cost is passed down by transport service providers to commuters who have no alternative but to use road transport. It does not help that the rail transport system has degenerated as much as it has over the last few decades due to curtailed investments in the mid-80s. Although the government has now made the improvement of the rail network top priority, its major focus is on rail freight rather than passenger rail transport. The rate of growth of rail freight volumes will further push down the need to prioritise passenger rail transport as it will be a large contributor to the economic growth of the country. This leaves road passengers still faced with the challenge of high cost of road network maintenance as the government tries to keep up the pace with rising demand for a reliable and safe road

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