The soaring running costs of Nelson Mandela Bay’s Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) cannot continue unchecked.
It costs six times as much as it makes in ticket sales to run the IPTS, making it reliant on national government grants.
So far the Department of Transport has been subsidising this annually. However, the admission by Transport Minister Blade Nzimande in his budget speech last month of “challenges” in the management of public transport subsidies is pertinent to our metro.
“We need to review the entire regime, including the amounts for the bus industry, commuter rail, Gautrain and the BRT systems,” Nzimande said – and we can only hope that our municipality was listening.In what could be a hint that national government may not fund public bus and rail transport networks forever, Nzimande questioned whether money was being “allocated equitably, especially in support of the workers and the poor, and whether adjustments are required”.
There is no doubt a city the size of Port Elizabeth, where a Motherwell student needs to travel to NMU, or a Central worker needs to head to Baywest, must have a decent public transport network.
However, since inception, the IPTS has been a financial disaster, hobbled by corruption and delays.
It remains to be seen if the Bay’s head of roads and transport, Marlon Daniels, is up to the task of securing its future.
Daniels’s comments yesterday, including “I’ve been handed a system to manage that is in shambles” and “if it continues this way we will have to close it down”, do not inspire confidence.
He also criticised the scarcity of ticket offices.
In time, the municipality may overcome the teething problems as it seeks to broaden the network.
Shutting it down hardly seems an option, with close to R3-billion spent so far and a framework in place.
Without a viable alternative, there is every incentive to make it work.
This city needs to move its people safely and efficiently.
But for now the road ahead for the IPTS remains a treacherous one.