Wheels come off BRT as treasury cuts off funding

Lack of competent engineers, poor fiscal management and inability to reach the target of at least 100,000 passenger trips daily have contributed to the demise of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system across the country.

This is according to the national department of transport, as the government plans to scale down the public transport network grant following an announcement by finance minister Enoch Godongwana in parliament last week.

The grant is a fund from the state to help municipalities develop and manage integrated public transport systems, including the BRT services. It’s meant to fund infrastructure, cover indirect costs and promote integration.

An integrated public transport system is essential to support working-class communities. We will replace it with better-targeted support.

—  Enoch Godongwana, finance minister

However, the grant, which averages about R80bn, has failed in its purpose to revitalise BRT in some municipalities, while the transport system has completely collapsed in other cities.

During his medium-term budget policy statement on Wednesday, Godongwana said the grant had failed to meet its objectives.

“An integrated public transport system is essential to support working-class communities. We will replace it with better-targeted support,” he said.

According to the expenditure priorities document from Treasury, changes are being implemented in phases, with savings of R6.7bn included in the 2026 medium term expenditure framework(MTEF).

The document said the grant has failed to increase mobility and expand access to jobs and economic opportunities.

“Over the medium term, the grant will be phased out, and replaced with new arrangements to explore integrated public transport and improvements to higher-density housing to maximise benefits,” read the document.

Initially the grant supported 13 municipalities but due to mismanagement Mbombela, Msunduzi and Buffalo City municipalities were suspended in 2020 but readmitted later.

By December 2022 the number of municipalities had been reduced to eight cities, namely Cape Town, George, Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Gqeberha, Polokwane and Rustenburg which were operational and carrying a combined 136,242 average passenger trips daily.

Transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi told Sowetan that scaling down on infrastructure would allow more resources to be directed towards operations and increasing bus fleets.

He said the focus would also shift to high-demand areas where services are needed most.

According to Msibi, even in the better-performing cities, years of delays were caused by a lack of continuity in technical project staff and slow negotiations with affected operators.

He said the department had been warning cities for the past decade that they needed to scale up and bring in mass transit experts.

“Since 2016, cities have been advised to downscale heavy infrastructure, yet they still struggled to plan and negotiate with affected operators and scale up operations and vehicle fleets.”

Msibi said cities would now need to prioritise building proper capacity and strengthening planning, integration and regulation of local public transport services.

The department will soon meet with Treasury to discuss the next steps.

Msibi said the scaling down of the current grant may also lead to consideration of a future funding model.

Makashule Gana, a member of the portfolio committee on transport and a member of RiseMzansi, said the committee had recently expressed concerns about the grant’s performance.

“The inability of the municipalities to use it, and it has not reached the levels that were predicted both in terms of passenger numbers and the revenue generation.

“It [the minister’s decision] didn’t come as a surprise. It was expected, and there had to be a review of the grant itself, and that is what we had expressed as we met as the committee, that the grant is just not performing.

“In eThekwini [municipality] they have not had their BRT off the ground. There have been challenges with Rustenburg and Polokwane, so this particular grant has not been performing.”

He said municipalities would need to rethink their capacity and spend whatever budget they are given.

DA spokesperson for transport Chris Hunsinger said the grant should not be scaled down, saying there were other measures to ensure that BRT programme was successful such as capacitating officials and hiring experts to work with cities. He said this was because most cities were never geared to handle the programme, and many did not have engineers.

“The infrastructure [was also an issue] – It is far more complicated to run a bus service in an operational sense than to just construct terminals and buy buses.

“It is sad to go oversight and observe rows of buses standing on the grass and that have never worked and you see they have done zero kilometres on the clock.”

Sowetan