It was on a Saturday in April 1974, while rushing to the bus stop on Klipfontein Road in Athlone to catch a bus to confirmation classes at St John’s Church in Bellville-South, that I missed the Bellville bus.
I could not miss that class so, as a 13-year-old, I began my journey of walking the 18km to Bellville-South. It was an uneventful walk on a hot Saturday.
Near UWC, Archie Sonn, brother of the late advocate Percy Sonn, who lived on the same street as us, passed by and gave me a ride over the last few kilometres.
Many people in our cities do long walks to school or other places out of necessity.
In October 2021, I was in Rietbron, a town where the nearest high schools are in Beaufort West or Willowmore – both towns over 60km away and with no public transport for those children who need to travel to high school.
A great country has a great public transport system. It is when people can travel to places of necessity in safety and with efficiency that we see the essence of a great city and country.
The politicisation and monetisation of public transport in any country is the death of a great transport system.
With public transport being one of the first spaces to become de-segregated, with Cape Town declaring in May 1979 that bus segregation had been abolished, it is sad to see the public devaluing this service and the state trying to make it “pay for itself”.
First, unless the state and its municipalities have massive campaigns to persuade the middle-class and rich to use buses, taxis and trains, there is no way the bus, train or taxi service will “pay for itself”.
A quick search of other metros around the world shows that the “NYC subway historically recovers less than 50% of its operating expenditures from fares, compared to 70% for Berlin, and 88% for Amsterdam”.
Public transport is a public service and should be treated as such. The income tax collection structure should cater for the ability to provide this service, first to the citizens who need it, and second to persuade motorists and their passengers to use the taxi, bus and train services.
In other cities of the world, public transport is the great leveller in society. In those cities, you could be sitting next to a government minister, famous actor, wealthy suburbanite, or homeless person on a train or bus.
In post-apartheid South Africa, the big goal is to persuade the middle-class and the rich to use public transport. The desegregation that occurred in May 1979 has not translated into a de-segregation of the mentality that the post-apartheid public transport services are for poor people. The rich drive their cars.
Public transport politicians lack the boldness to do the things that may cost them votes but gain them a legacy and help build a great city. The crazy cautiousness and political piecemeal and pandering have sunk public transport into this classist system.
I was in a meeting earlier this year where people met to talk about the increased roll-out of public transport and none of them were public transport users. I sat there thinking how bizarre this dialogue was.
Unless the public transport owners, operators and users are in the room, the planners are talking to themselves.
If our public transport planners don’t build comprehensive, inclusive and incentivised public transport systems, they are failing us.
Trains, buses and taxis are moving people of all economic classes all over the world’s cities. What’s our problem in South Africa?
* Lorenzo A. Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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