2005-12-03,+Gautrain+wont+scratch+where+people+itch,+Makgetla,+Bday


 * Business Day, Johannesburg, 02 December 2005**

= **Gautrain will not scratch where the people itch** =


 * Neva Makgetla**

A CORE part of the apartheid dream was that the rich would speed along freeways in luxury cars, and never see the poverty around them. Gautrain fits this paradigm — which suggests it shouldn’t have a place in the new SA.

Certainly something must be done for public transport and to deal with the congestion on the N1. For years, transport has deteriorated in Gauteng. Unfortunately, Gautrain won’t address the main deficiency in commuter transport: the inefficient, unsafe and costly systems available to working people. Yet we have never seen an analysis of its opportunity costs. Is this really the best way to use the vast sums involved — currently R20bn, or about four times the initial estimates — to improve Gauteng’s ailing transport infrastructure?

For working people and the economy, commuter transport is critical because apartheid settlement patterns forced most black workers to the edges of cities, far from employment and services. Yet the state of public transport is dire, with cutbacks in public buses and rail, and a shift to private taxis that typically operate under great economic pressure.

In 2004, a transport department study found that almost a fifth of all workers travelled for over an hour to work. Not surprisingly, people using public transport generally endured the longest commuting time.

The study found that half of residents in the metro areas used public transport, while most of the rest used cars. Access to cars depended above all on income: in Gauteng, 20% of households earned more than R3000 a month, and two thirds of them had access to a car. In contrast, cars were available to only a tenth of the remaining households.

How does public transport measure up to the needs of working communities? Well, in Gauteng, as in most of the country, about two thirds of commuters on public transport used taxis. But it wasn’t out of choice. They relied on taxis because no buses or trains were available in their areas. More than half expressed dissatisfaction with taxis, which they saw as dangerous and expensive.

The data bear out their perceptions. In Gauteng, public transport is often bad for your health. In 2003, only motorcycles were more dangerous than taxis and buses in fatalities per kilometres travelled. Cars were only a third as bad. Moreover, in 2004, a quarter of taxis had been bought well before 1990, and the average was 13 years old.

Cost is another critical factor. The transport study showed that for almost a third of households earning less than R3000 a month, transport absorbed 20% of income. If you live in Diepsloot or Soweto, transport will run at least R20 a day. Since half of workers earn less than R1000 a month, that is a tremendous burden.

Government does subsidise commuter transport, mostly through bus and rail subsidies at R5bn a year. Taxis don’t get any subsidy, however, and municipalities have been cutting back on bus services. Moreover, budget projections suggest that in the next few years rail and bus subsidies will lag far behind population growth in metro areas.

Gautrain does not pretend to address these problems. The economics of the system mean passengers must be able to pay for expensive tickets. That rules out service to townships like Soweto or Alex, although they face the worst transport problems. In short, from the standpoint of the majority of commuters, Gautrain will just drain public transport funds to serve the rich. Meanwhile, working people will remain stuck with unsafe, unreliable and expensive taxis, buses and trains.

It seems more sensible to explore less costly options for the Pretoria-Johannesburg axis, for instance upgrading regular trains and buses. Some of the R20bn could then support a qualitative improvement in public transport for ordinary workers.

Moreover, it could be used to make housing in and near city centres denser; a strained housing budget, at about R20bn a year or 5% of national expenditure, is one of the main reasons that new settlements are still pushed into open fields far away from jobs.

‖Makgetla is an economist with the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A122087