Cape Town has taken two crucial steps towards creating one of the finest public transport systems in the country.
|||Cape Town - Cape Town has taken two crucial steps towards creating one of the finest public transport systems in the country.
The City of Cape Town’s council on Wednesday approved 12-year contracts for MyCiTi’s Vehicle Operating Companies (VOC), seen as a crucial next step for the roll-out of the service.
Mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron said three companies that had been established by minibus taxi owners would be tasked with operating parts of the MyCiTi service during the initial roll-out of the system.
The contracts had been approved after three rounds of public participation between June 2010 and June 2013. “The companies will be responsible for operating the buses, in accordance with the timetables and routes as stipulated by Cape Town’s MyCiTi team; maintaining the buses they are allocated to operate on these routes; and managing the bus depots and staging areas,” Herron said.
“The success of MyCiTi depends on a number of factors. Firstly, the majority of the current minibus taxi operators must agree to having their operating licences suspended, and to scrapping their vehicles in favour of a shareholding in one of the companies. Secondly, competing bus companies must give up their subsidies for competing routes. Taking this into consideration, a long-term, 12-year contract was necessary to make an attractive offer to current public transport operators.”
The operation of the bus services will be funded by grant revenue from the national government’s public transport infrastructure grant, the public transport network operating grant, the public transport operating grant, and fare and advertising revenue. Herron argued that the long-term contracts also incentivised the companies to maintain the vehicles. This progress would now allow the city to hasten the expansion of the service.
Simultaneously on Wednesday, the City of Cape Town adopted “the Transport for Cape Town By-law of 2013”, which the city believes will make for “easier, faster, more convenient and more cost-effective transport”.
Mayor Patricia de Lille launched the new transport authority, to be known as Transport for Cape Town (TCT), last October and the by-law adopted on Wednesday was “to guide the establishment of a governance structure, operating parameters and requirements for TCT”.
The city said on Wednesday that the by-law “makes it possible for all nine of the city’s transport functions to be housed under one governance structure.
The by-law will allow for the development of an integrated transport network across the city, accessible within 500m of nearly every home. It will now go through the gazetting process,” the city said.
Cape Argus