Abstract:
In the City of Cape Town (the City), a significant increase in the use of minibus taxi
services by commuters are experienced. Reasons cited for this are the rise in fuel prices,
rapid decline in rail services, increased congestion on the roads and limited subsidised
transport services and/or footprint in the City.
The regulation of minibus taxi services in the City occur reactively - where new operating
licences are considered post facto after the public transport route has already been
established and without the route being verified by the City. For this reason, the City made
a conscious decision, from a Planning Authority perspective, to start a process to move to
a proactive environment - where the City will be in a position to determine the need for any
particular public transport service prior to operators starting to operate illegally on routes
they deem necessary - from a sustainable minibus taxi supply and demand perspective.
To accomplish this, the City first had to get the foundation properly laid for the different
building blocks in the process that will ultimately allow the City to achieve this.
The first layer in this foundation is the Minibus Taxi Special Regulatory Project. This
project aims to legalise long standing minibus taxi vehicles, consider and verify all
proposed new minibus taxi routes, ensure that inactive members and/or operating licences
go through the required process to free these up for reallocation and to determine if there
is a need for merging taxi associations or register new taxi associations in the City.
