Negotiating the deal to enable the first Rea Vaya Bus operating company: agreements, experiences and lessons

Abstract

Paper presented at the 30th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 11-14 July 2011 "Africa on the Move", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

A City of Johannesburg team and a taxi industry team, representing taxi operators affected by the implementation of Phase 1A of the Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system, spent over a year in negotiations to sign a contract for the operation of the Rea Vaya bus services. The process was not simply about agreeing a contract, but dealt with the complexity of creating a new bus operating company owned by more than 300 minibus-taxi operators and putting together a deal that enabled the operators to give up their current businesses. This paper describes the key agreements reached during the negotiations. It shares some of the lessons learned by the City negotiations team in the process that may be useful to other cities transforming their public transport networks with the participation of affected public transport operators.