On Tuesday, thousands of Rea Vaya commuters were left frustrated and stranded as services from Soweto to several parts of Joburg were abruptly halted without prior notice.
The effect of this was that hard-pressed commuters who rely on the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system to get to work had to make alternative arrangements at a heavy price. Some commuters had to fork out more than double what they would normally pay a day to get to work.
Such has been the state of mismanagement of the Rea Vaya service that leaving commuters stranded and incur extra costs for transport is a norm.
In January, the feeder services of the Rea Vaya in Soweto were suspended amid a dispute over nonpayment of bus operators by the city. Tuesday’s suspension of services was also triggered by a R30m debt the city owes operators Piotrans and Litsamaiso, according to the business rescue practitioner of the BRT, Mahir Tayob.
This was yet another episode of failure in the long-running deterioration of the BRT, a service once billed as a panacea to the city’s poor public transport system. The city’s neglect of Rea Vaya is not only a betrayal of its public mandate to provide residents with safe, efficient, affordable and reliable public transport but also an indicator of its dysfunction.
With at least 45,000 commuters relying on the service a day, Rea Vaya is one of the biggest public transport systems in Johannesburg, with only the taxi industry ferrying more people around the city.
More than a decade since its launch ahead of the World Cup in 2009, Rea Vaya has largely remained limited to a few routes mainly between the CBD and Soweto despite promises of its expansion.
The City of Johannesburg has had more mayors since 2016 than the number of new routes launched for the service to reach more residents of the city. This is because politicians are less concerned about attending to the pressing issues that will improve the lives of the voters they depend on for their cushy jobs.
The BRT project was from the beginning designed to give Joburg residents better means of commuting from home to school and work, not to give them misery.
But the shambolic state that the service has fallen into can only mean that one day we will wake up to news that it is being shut down indefinitely.
It will represent a monumental betrayal of the public trust in the governance of their city.
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