Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has written to Transport Minister Barbara Creecy and Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, calling for urgent funding certainty for MyCiTi bus services as the national Public Transport Network Grant (PTNG) was being phased out.

MyCiTi is the most successful service of its kind in South Africa, accounting for 42% of all passenger trips on bus rapid transit (BRT) nationally. Commuter travel has grown by 68% since 2021 to 23 million passenger trips annually, and is expected to reach 30 million once the Cape Flats extension begins operating.

However, uncertainty over national grant funding is now jeopardising both existing MyCiTi services and the major new Cape Flats route expansion, set to benefit over 1,4 million residents across 30 neighbourhoods, from Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha to Wynberg and Claremont.

Hill-Lewis said national funding reforms were understandable, given that most BRT systems in metros and large towns have failed, with billions in grant funding allocated in some cases without a single scheduled service ever commencing.

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Billions wasted

He said: “The state should not throw out the baby with the bathwater by cutting funding to successful BRT services along with all the unsuccessful ones. We do support the ending of unsuccessful programmes where billions have been wasted on metro bus services that never got off the ground.

But successful public transport services must be protected, especially for the sake of millions of Cape Town commuters in lower-income communities who will benefit from growing the MyCiTi bus service.

The Mayor said the City does not oppose the proposed creation of a Public Transport Fund to replace the PTNG and other funding streams, but was calling for long-term certainty and performance-based funding for MyCiTi and other successful programmes.

“We are also seeking the reversal of national cuts already made to PTNG funding. I’ve asked the two ministers responsible – of transport and finance – for an urgent engagement, as these funding uncertainties place the new Cape Flats route and the entire MyCiTi service at risk.”

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‘Good performance penalised’

Mayco member for Urban Mobility Rob Quintas said the national cuts penalise good performance in Cape Town, where R7,1 billion has already been committed to infrastructure for the new Cape Flats route expansion.

The next step was to convert this infrastructure into actual passenger service, including bus fleet procurement. However, this is now at risk due to national cuts to the PTNG, which is set to be phased out at the end of 2027/28.

“Unlike the failing BRT systems in other cities, Cape Town has continued to invest, deliver and grow ridership,” said Quintas. “It is only right that Cape Town’s MyCiTi service not be subjected to the same potential funding cut-off as systems that have never left the starting blocks. This creates a perverse outcome: punishing performance and effectively subsidising failure.”

He said the City invited national government to look at what Cape Town has built, measure it against what has been built elsewhere, and make a funding decision they can defend, not to politicians or officials, but to the commuters who depend on the system every single day.

Quintas also re-issued a standing invitation to Transport Minister Creecy to take a MyCiTi “safari” visit, to see first-hand how the billions invested have benefited commuters through major infrastructure such as the Spine Road depots and the Sky Circle in Lansdowne.