It costs six times as much as it makes in ticket sales to run the Nelson Mandela Bay bus system, putting its viability firmly at the mercy of national government grants.
About R4-million goes towards the salaries of the bus drivers, conductors and security every month, and to taxi owners paid for having pulled their vehicles from the Cleary Park route.
This does not include fuel and maintenance and other operational costs for the buses and taxis used as feeders to the main bus route.
The Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) is funded largely by the national Department of Transport, which gives a grant every year for all the infrastructure requirements.
It also provides about 70% of the operational costs, with the municipality having to fund the rest.
Close to R3-billion has been spent on the IPTS project since its inception. The aim was to have a safer, affordable and more integrated public transport system, and to cut down on road congestion.
According to a report to the roads and transport portfolio committee, which met on Thursday, about 28 696 tickets had been sold from May 15, when the buses started ferrying paying customers, to June 6, bringing in a total of about R339 489.
This has improved since, with R634 000 in tickets sold thus far, the municipality said last week.
However, only two centres sell the tickets – the Mfanasekhaya Gqobose Customer Service building (formerly Eric Tindale) and the Cleary Park Customer Service Centre, limiting access for people who want to use the buses.
In the report to the transport committee, IPTS acting project manager Luthando Mabhoza wrote: “This lack in access limits the number of people who want to use the bus and impacts negatively on the ridership and revenue.
“A tender for the appointment of vendors to sell tickets is being developed and this will greatly assist in increasing access to the tickets.”His report also highlighted:
The municipality pays the owners of the 100 taxis removed from the Cleary ParkCBD route, which are n ow used as feeders to the bus route, about R13 000 each a month; and
A further 100 taxi owners, whose vehicles were removed from the routes and placed in storage, receive about R7 700 each a month. This deal is in place for three years and excludes the salaries of those running the buses and feeder taxis.The salaries total about R2-million a month.
The costs are likely to increase substantially when the Njoli corridor route is rolled out in the next financial year and the Uitenhage route the year thereafter.
The metro also intends buying new buses for the additional routes and will be advertising tenders soon.
Municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki declined to reveal at this stage how many buses would be bought, saying it would compromise supply chain management processes.
Bay political head of roads and transport Marlon Daniels said the bus system was not running optimally and if the situation did not change, the municipality should reconsider the IPTS altogether.
“The problem is that the buses don’t accept cash and there are only two places where you can buy tickets.
“That’s a major challenge as to why there are no bums on the seats. “If it continues this way, we will have to close it down.
“It’s sad that I’ve been handed a system to manage that is in shambles,”
Daniels said. However, portfolio head of budget and treasury Retief Odendaal said that when the metro decided to pursue the IPTS, it had known it was never going to be profitable.Similar systems in the City of Cape Town, Johannesburg and George are all subsidised by the national government.
“I don’t think there’s a public transport system in the world that is not subsidised by the state,” Odendaal said.
“The key is we must try to ensure that the subsidy is as little as possible – and we are still a long way from getting the system to where it should be.”
He said he considered the IPTS along the Cleary Park route a pilot project at this stage and if it turned out to be a failure, they would have to go back to the drawing board.
“For the foreseeable future, we are still going to be heavily subsidising the IPTS – and, fortunately, we get grant funding for it,” Odendaal said.
“But it doesn’t mean we will implement a system that continuously runs at major losses.
“If we see the passenger numbers are not picking up, we need to see if the routes are speaking to what we want.
“The system needs to add value to the communities, and if it doesn’t do that, what’s the point?”
He said that while the national government was funding the system now, there would probably come a time when the municipality would have to fund the bulk of the operational costs.
“Hopefully, by that time, the ticket sales will be better and will not necessitate us covering such a big portion of the costs.
“We want to get to a situation where we get value for money for the system.”