I had dinner with Jan and Arnold tonight and we talked a little about transport in Cape Town. I’m not in-the-know at all: my life moves in a narrow orbit. But they are a little better informed. Of course, next year the football world cup is coming to South Africa, but over the longer term the whole country is facing congestion problems. Roads in South Africa are labeled as N (national), R (regional), M (municipal), and then local roads and streets. Cape Town sits where the N1 (to Johannesburg), N2 (along the south coast), and N3 (not sure, but I think it runs up the west coast) meet. Cape Town is not really cramped, but there is not enough space for a lot of new roads. Especially not in the inner city. Moreover, there is very little public transport. There are trains, but people do not use them unless they have to. Many people use minibus taxis, but they are unregulated, cause a lot of accidents, are often not roadworthy, … oh the problems are too numerous to mention. Then there are a few “big” bus roads, but not many.

So I heard about two approaches to solve these problems. First there is a new luxury commuter train that runs from the Strand to Somerset West, Faure, Kuilsriver, Old Mutual, and Cape Town. This is primarily for City Centre workers: only monthly tickets are available, they serve coffee (all kinds) and morning papers, have internet. Access is limited (so that will hopefully stop the riff-raff) and they provide guarded, under-cover parking at the stations. I guess the interior is not too bad, either. If I had to commute to the city centre, I would definitely try this. It’s not much more expensive than driving, it saves time and of course you don’t have to drive the train yourself. Unless you are the machinist.

The other scheme is BRT: bus rapid transport. They are building, or have been building, extra lanes for busses. These have been open access but dedicated for sole use by busses during certain peak times. Now it seems there are going to install bus lines with stations and satellite control and the whole works and throw the minibus taxis and big busses out of the lanes.  They might — I hope they do — separate these lanes physically. I can’t find much info on Cape Town’s scheme (the city web site looks to be down), but it sounds excellent.

These are, like I said, long term projects. Perhaps reaching fruition only after about 15 years. But it will be wonderful if they work. I would love to take the bus to work. The peak time traffic between Somerset West and Stellenbosch is amazingly heavy, but I’m not too optimistic about a BRT system coming to this route soon. There are many other more heavily-used routes. And since there is no rail connection, a luxury train is probably also out of the question. So I’m stuck with my car unfortunately. And tomorrow the car is going in for repairs, so we’ll see how I cope with this situation.