"Trains set alight by angry commuters". This is what media headlines said when commuters around Pretoria went on the rampage last year after trains were delayed. Except references to delays, none of the reports dealt with the problems faced by commuters as they go about their business. Dinga Sikwebu, Numsa's national education co-ordinator went to find out about transport problems faced by workers daily. He focuses on the transport system in urban areas.

Since the Pretoria coach-burning incident, Cosatu workers in the Western Cape have been on a legal strike demanding increased safety on the trains. They were also protesting against Metrorial's reduction of train rides per line which workers view as the main contributor to "increased congestion and lateness at work".

It is no accident that the protests took place in Pretoria and in Cape Town . More than in any other metropolitan area, people in both towns rely on trains to go to work.

According to Department of Transport statistics, rail carries 58% of public transport trips in Cape Town and in Pretoria 38%. Both shares are way above national averages and passengers on trains have been increasing by 3 – 5% per year since the middle of the 1990s. (Department of Transport, Moving South Africa )

While the events in Pretoria and Cape Town may have grabbed media attention, every day workers have to deal with the consequences of a transport system that does not prioritise commuters. Despite the passing in August 2000 of the Land Transport Act, South Africa 's transport system remains fragmented with each mode having its own time-table and ticketing system.

Public transport problems

Taxis: After much fanfare accompanying the announcement on recapitalisation of the taxi industry analysed in a previous edition of the Numsa Bulletin, the whole programme seems to have stalled. While taxi violence captures the news now and again, road safety remains the biggest problem of the taxi industry. Buses: Buses still run empty and services are infrequent. With scheduling designed to maximise profit, a bus that leaves Soweto at 04h30 in the morning reaches Pretoria four hours later. Declining subsidies have been accompanied by a drastic reduction of service in off-peak periods. For many bus companies, it is more profitable for buses that leave the townships in the morning to park in industrial areas and wait for after work passengers. This makes travelling to town during the day by bus difficult. No wonder buses have an occupancy of 51% on average. Between 1988/9 and 1997/8, bus passengers have dropped from 700 million to 400 million. Trains: Frequency on some train lines has been very poor. Trains are not integrated with supporting bus services. With bus service stopping after transporting workers back to the townships, trains have been the only mode for evening travel. With this now changing due to reduction of hours over which services operate, townships are really becoming dormitory suburbs. There is also the issue of safety. For many commuters with the increase in accidents it seems that "if you are not in a train smash, you may be mugged inside the train. It's a no-win situation".

While the legislation called for co-ordination between different transport modes, so far no co-ordination is taking place between buses, trains and taxis.

Commuters suffer

Soweto residents and workers at Promax, a company that makes medical appliances in Wynberg in Johannesburg , get to work by taxi. For them, trains are no option as their shift starts at 06h30 in the morning.

Emily Twala from Soweto takes two taxis to work – one from Soweto to the city centre and another one to Wynberg. For her and her colleague Julia Chuene, changing from a taxi to a train would require that they leave home at 04h00!

"To avoid having to leave home when it's dark and when everyone is still asleep, we have to put up with four-four (16 people for a 9 seater) in a seat where taxi drivers pack us like sardines in their kombis," says Twala.

This uncomfortable ride is also uncomfortable on their pockets – it costs them R90 a week – 32,1% of their weekly take home. This is way above the 10% of their wage that the Department of Transport has targeted that commuters should be paying on transport!

But the lengthy train ride is not Promax workers' only problem with the train. Because of the location of stations within townships, getting a train to town may necessitate a ride from home to the stations in those unregistered battered local sedans known as amaphela (cockroaches) or oo-mashwabana.

The bigger picture

Twala and Chuene are part of the 70% of the population that use public transport. Just 30% use cars.

But for every R1 spent on Twala and Chuene and other public transport users, " South Africa spends R20 on private cars" says Vaughan Mostert, a lecturer in transport and logistics at the Rand Afrikaanse Universiteit (RAU). Or, put another way, the country spends R18 billion on public transport, but R150 billion in "getting and keeping cars on the road".

Government predicts that the country will have 8,7 million cars by 2020. This is 160 cars for every 1000 people – a high figure when compared with other countries. With our freeways already full of cars bumper-to-bumper during peak hours, the cost of the bias towards cars is enormous in terms of road construction, maintenance, environment, urban patterns and health costs resulting from accidents.

Detonating the time bomb

Unless something is urgently done about congestion, the high accident rates on our roads, pollution and road decay, the country's transport system will remain a time bomb ready to explode at any time.

Also needing change is the housing and urbanisation policy that leads to working class residential areas being far away from work. Attempts must also be made to integrate the different modes of transport. Central to this is a move away from a private-car emphasis in the current transport system towards an integrated public transport system. While research by transport consultant, Benedict Saint Laurent, shows that a single car lane takes 3 000 passengers per hour, a commuter rail track can take 100 000 passengers per hour!

Failure to address these issues will be a refusal to detonate a bomb in front of our eyes.

Ask members in your factory:

what kind of public transport do they use? what problems do they have with it? what suggestions do they have to improve it?

Source

Numsa News