October marks South Africa’s annual Transport Month in which government aims to raise awareness on the importance of the transport sector in the country’s economy.
In this context, various plans and goals for transport are announced by the national and provincial Departments of Transport at public events in October in an attempt to address key issues facing the industry.
However, according to the Automobile Association (AA), this year’s Transport Month is more like a “car without wheels.”
3 weeks of action followed by 49 weeks of nothing
While Transport Month has been launched with a bang with Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga and her cohorts attending the World Road Congress in Prague, Czech Republic; KwaZulu-Natal revealing 55 new pothole-repairing trucks; and the Eastern Cape donating 359 bicycles to school learners, not much has been done to improve road infrastructure at a national level or tackle the daily mobility crisis faced by millions of South Africans, said the AA.
“Highlighting transport issues in one month of the year while not very much is done in the other eleven months of the year to deal with the problems of mobility and transport is meaningless, and a waste of taxpayer money,” it said.
“This approach is like the seasonal campaigns on road safety: improving road safety won’t happen because two or three weeks of the year are spent speaking of the problem while nothing is done to improve road safety in the other 49 weeks of the year.”
The AA notes that road crashes still cost the economy around R200 billion per year, with this number steadily on the rise.
However, despite recommendations such as doubling the number of traffic law enforcers to deal with road violations more effectively coming to the fore, they go unheeded by the authorities.
“In fact, statistics show the country’s road safety record has not improved significantly at all during the past decade despite many Ministers of Transport committing themselves and their department to doing just that,” said the AA.
A second example is the vast amount of funds directed to the Gautrain which caters to a very small group of commuters.
In its latest annual report, the Gautrain Management Agency noted that in the 2022/2023 financial year, the private Gautrain concessionaire Bombela received a R2.3-billion subsidy known as the Patronage Guarantee from the Gauteng Department of Roads and Infrastructure for lower ridership levels on the system.
This means that more than 27% of the department’s R8.5-billion budget was spent on tending to an elite group of citizens that make use of the Gautrain, leaving reduced funding to service the majority of commuters in the province who still face enormous mobility issues.
“The reality is that millions of South Africans continue to struggle with inadequate road transport, poor mobility solutions, and deteriorating road infrastructure, and the already weak economy continues to suffer because of the low – or slow – pace of road transport development,” said the AA.
“Against this patently unfair background – and given the enormous transport and mobility challenges in the country – government is failing to acknowledge that citizens want real, meaningful change, and not the observance of a month where much is said but in which little is done to improve their transport, mobility, and road infrastructure needs.”
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