Several weeks from now, I will no longer see any of the familiar faces of the strangers I’ve become used to traveling with on the bus.
I don’t know a single one of their names but their quirks are so familiar to me now, they feel like friends — albeit friends I know only by sight.
Introverts like me are not good at making friends, unlike my mom, God rest her soul, who made a dozen new friends on every bus within minutes of boarding. I, however, prefer to observe from afar.
So, I will miss seeing which snappy, colourfully patterned suit one particular fellow commuter always dons.
I will miss noticing how the man with the bleach blonde afro bears an odd resemblance to the shepherd in Shaun the Sheep.
I will miss the deeply personal and one-sided chatter between one young woman — who doesn’t seem to realise that not everyone in the bus is wearing headphones — and her friend.
As of 1 September, I’ll be taking a different bus when our offices move and early this week, the biggest pang hit when the samoosa man boarded. I ate my warm, freshly-fried-at-the-taxi-rank samoosas sadly, knowing there wouldn’t be any on my new commute because there’s no eating allowed on MyCiTi buses.
When MyCiTi rolled out more than a dozen years ago, with strictly enforced rules, one of my colleague’s first questions was: “What about the people that sell things on the bus?”
Regular public transport commuters know there are some staples that come with every commute. I grew up on trains where an entire carriage was dedicated to praise and worship. Further down the tracks there would usually be another carriage where a group played klawerjas every day.
Taxis have their own form of entertainment. Last week when my car was broken, I took a taxi to some of my stories and was surprised when one elderly driver, whom all the passengers greeted by name, rocked a CD of old-school 90s club classics — a playlist I recognised since it had been in rotation the last time I regularly took a taxi to work in 1998.
The travelling-by-bus-quirks on the other hand came with the informal vendors, who walked from bus to bus with a box of snacks, and clever rhyme.
“Don’t be shy to buy. Tomorrow you’ll cry because you didn’t buy from the right guy.”
When MyCiTi launched about a dozen or so years ago, it gleamed and it flew, but it lacked the colourful character of traditional commutes.
When the municipality started trumpeting its desire to take over the rail system, I clutched my cheap beaded necklace in alarm. In my decades of journalism, I have noticed one consistent trend: the Cape Town Municipality likes to gentrify.
Public transport is how millions of the city’s workers get to their jobs — but not by choice. Most would love to work closer to where they live, but commuting long distances has become such a norm for those who had been condemned to the outskirts of the city that most don’t bat an eye at sitting for four hours on a bus in traffic daily or getting up at 04:00 to catch a train at 05:00 to reach work by 09:00.
When the City promised easier commutes with fancy buses and dedicated lanes, most people rejoiced, but only a fraction of regular commuters could afford it in the end. The last time I took a MyCiTi bus, about eight years ago, it was considerably more expensive than Golden Arrow. I don’t know how it compares now but I’ll find out soon.
Yes, MyCiTi covers routes previously served only sporadically by taxis — or not at all. Yes, it is convenient, quick and safe — but it also charges accordingly.
I’m not saying we don’t want or need safe and efficient public transport, but what we definitely don’t need is having those vital services out of our reach due to their cost.
If the City is successful in its bid to take over the metro trains, will the cheapest mode of transport be made unaffordable for those who need it most? I sincerely hope not.
ALSO READ: Cape Town’s first electric MyCiTi bus passes performance tests
