South Africa’s R4-billion rapid transport solution lying in ruin

South Africa has spent R4 billion on a rapid transport system for a major city which is only semi-functional and far from finished.

The Rustenburg Local Municipality (RLM) set about creating a new public transport service that would be fast, reliable, and affordable for local commuters, but the project has yet to be fully realized despite being in development for more than a decade.

An unfinished project

The RLM first announced its plans to develop the Rustenburg Rapid Transport (RTT) system 15 years ago, stating that the project will create exclusive bus lanes that will not be affected by traffic congestion.

It also stated that the service would replace the majority of mini-bus taxi operations, and that, once complete, the RTT would be able to accommodate the city’s 600,000 residents.

This would be achieved by a fleet of 60 buses, which could ferry around 20,000 people per day.

However, these ambitious goals have not come close to being realized, as highlighted by a recent BusinessTech report.

As it stands today, many of the RTT bus stops have either collapsed or have been vandalized.

Many of the disused bus lanes are covered in weeds and are now treated as expensive pedestrian paths by locals.

Planning for the RTT first began in 2009, and the project was initially budgeted for just under R3 billion.

Construction began in 2012, and the phase one routes were scheduled to be completed by 2015. However, numerous delays shortly ensued.

Former Transport Minister Fikhile Mbalula later wrote to parliament in 2019, stating that the initial operations would start no later than January 2020.

This deadline came and went, and the project’s capital expenditure continued to grow to a new total of R3.2 billion.

Phase one only started operations on 1 August, 2022, under the name Yarona Services, with a new expenditure of R3.4 billion.

When Carte Blanche reported on the project in October that same year, project overseer Obed Molele explained that a large portion of the funds went to building reinforced concrete bus lanes running on two corridors which “didn’t come cheap.”

Molele claimed that these lanes were complete, however, BusinessTech’s investigation found that most of the infrastructure remains closed and is now taking up space on congested roads that are in use.

Mbalula blamed the RTT’s various delays on the logistics of construction, and objections to the project.

“It was impractical to construct all routes and other infrastructure at once and within a short space of time as this would have caused a gridlock,” said the former transport minister.

“The municipality, therefore, had to phase in construction. There were further objections in the initial stages of construction, which halted construction of bus lanes and resulted in construction delays.”

For example, in the Auditor General’s 2022/23 report, material irregularities in Rustenburg were flagged because of “payments of R33.22 million to a supplier for work on the rapid transport project that was not performed.”

The DA caucus leader in Rustenburg, Luan Snyders, said that the RTT had issues with payments to services providers for services not rendered, and that much of the work that had been done was of a sub-standard quality.

The project was also hit with allegations of corruption, which led to an investigation by the National Treasury.

On top of all of this, the local taxi industry had its own concerns with how the RTT would supposedly replace its business.

The taxi council eventually signed a memorandum of understanding, and a committee was formed to negotiate with the RLM.

After considering factors like market value and route demand, an agreement was struck, and affected taxi operators were brought into equity ownership and employment, with many receiving training to become Yarona bus drivers.

Despite all of these problems, the RLM remains optimistic that it will complete the project soon.

Its official stance is that phase 1A, comprising 16 routes, is “fully operational” and that it has also launched phase 1C – consisting of an additional 16 routes through the CBD and multiple suburbs.

It claimed that phase 1A transports 10,000 people daily while phase 1C supports another 7,000 commuters, but these two figures combined still fall short of the 20,000 goal the project was aiming for by 2020.

Only two stations are functional, which means that buses cannot operate on the routes where there are no working stops.

The RLM has acknowledged that the project has taken a long time, stating that it will “rectify what has since been identified as ‘errors’ in infrastructure and will ensure completion of all outstanding infrastructure elements.”