Cape Town - Despite the growing number of informal taxi ranks owing to outdated ones, the City said it could not provide proposed new minibus taxi facilities right now.
The issue came to light after Goodwood and Kensington residents became the latest to complain about an informal rank on the corners of Voortrekker and Jakes Gerwel roads.
In response to the complaints, the City said its Transport Enforcement unit had been deployed 16 times, issuing a total of 3 001 fines and impounding a total of 124 taxis without success.
Taxi associations, however, said new and innovative facilities were needed to accommodate growing populations and modern commuter habits.
City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said: “Prasa/Metrorail has indicated recently that new train sets – matching the passenger capacity there was before the rail decline – will be in operation in the Cape Town Metro in the last quarter of 2021. The City can therefore not provide proposed new minibus taxi facilities right now as these proposed new facilities might become outdated once the rail service is back to normal operational levels, thus resulting in wasteful expenditure for the City.”
Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) general secretary Mandla Hermanus said discussions had taken place about revamping the existing transport modes.
“But the costs run into millions of rand, so it’s not something we think is going to happen soon. As much as they would say when rail is working everything will be back to normal, I don’t think it is entirely correct.
“You have to look at the travel habits of people changing and e-hailing, which has made people used to being taken from their doorstep to where they need to be.
“This excludes the minibus taxi industry, we are stuck on the old route where people must go to a rank and get taxis there.
“We need something more innovative, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to start building ranks everywhere, we need spaces that bring public transport closer to commuters.”
The City meanwhile said that the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco), which has a seat on the Intermodal Planning Committee (IPC), should address operational challenges such as proposed new minibus taxi ranks at this platform.
“Taxi ranks cannot simply be created across the city illegally as the need arises,” Tyhalibongo said.
However, Santaco public relations officer Gershon Geyer said the IPC meetings had not happened in a while.
“It never happened last year. Then this year I only found out about the meeting a week after it took place. However, it could not proceed because they never met the quorum. The city just issues permits but does not invest in ranking facilities.”
He said money allocated to facility upgrades was always used for something else.
Cape Times