This year’s conference was turned into a series of webinars because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the third webinar exploring the pandemic’s effects on public transport. The fourth webinar, on 21 October, will look at the future of the African aviation sector.
Dachs said that if South Africa is to properly prepare for its growing population and survive climate change, it must boost its economy and invest in and develop a seamlessly integrated public transport system. Without that, and with the country’s projected population growth, cities will be congested with personal vehicles that contribute to emitting the high levels of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change. South Africa is already one of the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitters, according to The Carbon Brief.
The country’s population, at Statistics South Africa’s latest mid-year population review in 2019, was 58.8m. It is projected to reach 63m by 2050, according to the Copenhagen Consensus Center think tank. Sub-Saharan Africa is projected by the United Nations to be one of the regions that will be worst affected by climate change.
The webinars have been co-organised by the International Road Federation, whose director general, Susanna Zammataro, said that all transport modes are part of a sector that only works effectively if the margins between them are seamless.
South Africa’s transport sector employs more than a million people. Paratransit sector specialist, Nico McLachlan who was also one of the webinar panelists said that the minibus taxi industry alone employs approximately one million people.
The third panelist, Bazil Govender, the executive manager of Southern African Bus Operators Association said during the webinar that the country’s bus and coach sector directly employs about 32,200 people, and 171,000 indirectly.
Covid-19 has ravaged public transport across the world, causing an "unprecedented" drop in demand of between 60% and 90%, because public transport is rightly seen as a high-risk activity, said Dachs.
Although in many places, including South Africa, commuters and other users are returning to public transport, the pandemic has also severely damaged economies, he said. This has, and will continue to have, an effect on public transport as people have lost jobs, which means they are neither commuting, nor can they afford fares.
Dachs said the next 18 to 36 months are uncertain, while Cape Town-based McLachlan said four of that city’s taxi associations that were polled do not foresee a return to pre-Covid passenger numbers for a year or two.
In addition to a loss of passengers, the post-Covid world is one of increased operating costs, the three panelists said. This is due to new service protocols, such as sanitising vehicles and a reduction in the permitted carrying capacity. In the meantime, operators still have to make bank payments on vehicles and infrastructure. All of this puts immense pressure on a sector dominated by small businesses that can’t absorb financial shocks well.
South Africa’s public transport sector has always been poorly subsidised, with parts of it not subsidised at all, said Govender. The time has come for a complete review of the sector, he said, along with acknowledgement of its centrality to South Africa’s recovery from Covid-19, and to the country’s economy, which had been performing poorly before the pandemic hit.
The good news is that it appears the industry’s plight has been put at the top of the government’s agenda for South Africa’s economic recovery, Govender said. It is important, however, that the departments of transport and tourism begin to work together when it comes to making plans and setting subsidy budgets.
It is time for a transport lekgotla that will revise the public transport system, said Govender – South Africa’s entire public transport sector needs serious review and reprioritisation.
The sponsors for the webinars are Miovision, a United Kingdom-based traffic data research company, and Go Metro in South Africa, an award-winning international provider of mobility technology and planning solutions for public transport challenges.
