SA transport 'in crisis'
Cape Town - South Africa's transport sector is in crisis, ANC MP and chairperson of parliament's transport portfolio committee Jeremy Cronin said on Tuesday.
"We've got a very, very substantial crisis around transport mobility and accessibility," he told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club meeting.
Cronin criticised government's transport policies of the 90s, saying these had proved "disastrous".
"I'm afraid to say that in the first decade of ANC government, transport was a terribly neglected area."
Transport "forgotten"
A lot of attention had gone into health care, education, housing, and the economy, and transport had tended to be forgotten, he said.
On the taxi recapitalisation programme - a plan to rid the country of its 120 000-strong ageing and dangerous taxi fleet - he said this was "in the doldrums".
Government was "trying to spend R7.7bn of public money on the taxi sector, and the intended beneficiaries of this public largesse are telling us to voertsak, telling us to go away, they're not interested".
Almost two-thirds of commuters nationally used mini-bus taxis, but the industry was "controlled by war lordism... (it is) basically a feudal rentier system that is operating here".
The way the industry operated was illogical and irrational, and it had "eroded" previously successful city bus services.
No "blitzkrieg"
Responding to a question on why government did not crack down on "lawless" taxi operators, he said "you don't get there with a blitzkrieg".
What was needed was to be "firm and tough".
On South Africa's high road death toll - between 14 000 and 17 000 people were killed on the country's roads last year - he said this was "one symptom of this problem that we've got around infrastructure, mobility, accessibility and transport".
The fatalities and injuries were costing South Africa R42bn a year, Cronin said.
Turning to traffic policing, he described the administration of this as "incoherent".
Only two percent of traffic offences that should have gone to court actually ended up there.
"There are huge problems on this front," he said.
Speeding and drunk driving
The key causes of accidents were speeding and drunk driving, but laboratories that carried out blood testing were backlogged with work.
As a result, authorities were "not able to crack down massively on drunk driving".
On passenger rail service Metrorail, Cronin said this was "starved of resources and under-capitalised", and had been for decades.
"For the 12 years the ANC has been in power, and for the 10 to 15 years before that as well."
South Africa had "extremely inadequate public transport", which was hugely problematic.
"The good news is that in the last few years, government has become more aware that transport is critical... but what remains in deep crisis is the public transport reality," he said.
News from www.news24.co.za
Posted by: www.SouthAfrica-CarHire.com
