Cape Town The growing trend of “curbside taxi ranks” is more complex than it appears, major associations in the City said.
This comes after Goodwood and Kensington residents became the latest to complain about an informal rank that sprung up late last year on the corners of Voortrekker and Jakes Gerwel Roads.
In response to the complaints, the City said its Transport Enforcement unit has been deployed 16 times to the Goodwood area since November last year, issuing a total of 3 001 fines and impounding a total of 124 taxis without success.
Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) general secretary Mandla Hermanus said they needed more ranks.
“Informal ranks are a common thing. Ranks are very few and far in between. There is one at Bellville and Parow, then there are no other ranks along Voortrekker, so there is no space to park and that is the challenge,” Hermanus said.
“Then the ranks here are always close to the railway station and the stations are not closer to the main road where your commuters are.
“Also rail is totally dysfunctional so there are no people at the train station. Then there is also the winter rain… taxis want to be close to where their customers are,” he said.
Hermanus added that there needed to be more spaces created for taxis to operate from.
“The current ranks are no longer useful. When they were designed they didn’t take into account population growth, there are more taxis now 10 years later.”
Congress of Democratic Taxi Association (Codeta) spokesperson Andile Khanyi said they did not support illegal parking.
“Those taxis do not belong to us. We do not support illegal parking. You cannot just park where you want to park; it makes it harder for another vehicle driving and sometimes it is a private property. It is wrong and we cannot use the impact of Covid-19 to justify that,” he said.
The South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) in the Western Cape said they had not been aware of the rank in Goodwood, but was now aware that it was a growing issue in the province.
“There was a notice that came from the registrar of taxis about illegal ranks going up everywhere. This is the work of law enforcement and the registrar to see that it does not happen.
“I am not sure why it is increasing. I don’t know if it is because of Covid-19 because business is bad. Taxis are operating at probably half of what we used to operate,” Santaco public relations officer Gershwin Geyer said.
Cape Times