The daily commuter struggle in Cape Town is no joke. For some, it’s the two hours spent on the bus from Mitchells Plain to get to work in the city centre; for others, the long wait at a busy Metrorail station to catch a train home. Just last year, Cape Town was ranked the sixth most congested city in the world in the Inrix 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard, with the average driver losing 96 hours in traffic over a year.
It’s a serious business constraint, says Jacques Moolman, president of the Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry. “What congestion costs a business is easier to describe than to invoice. Congestion is paid for in fuel, wages, missed delivery windows and vehicle time, spread thinly across every trip and never totalled,” he says.
And things are only going to get worse, with the city’s population expected to grow in the coming decades. “Cape Town is a bustling city. A lot of people are coming to work here. People tend to live further away from work,” says Gershwin Fortune, head of transportation advisory services at Henry Fagan Engineers & Project Managers, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the transport sector. “In the next 20 years, I see Cape Town growing into Stellenbosch, growing into Malmesbury. We’re going to be a super-metropolitan area.”
The greater the sprawl, he says, the more people will rely on their own vehicles to get around. “People choose a specific mode because it has to be reliable, safe and convenient” – and affordable. Over time, he says, public transport has lost out in that space.
As it is, city figures show that 55% of people relied on private vehicles for their commute in the 2024/2025 period. About 22% used minibus taxis (MBTs) as their main mode of transport, while just 3% used commuter rail.
These figures were released as part of the city’s integrated transport plan, out for public comment until September 30. Once the public participation is complete and the document updated, it will be submitted to the city’s urban mobility portfolio committee for consideration and recommendation for final approval by the council.
The central problem, the document says, is that sustainable means of transport, including public transport and active mobility, are too expensive, unsafe, unreliable and inconvenient for many users. This does not, however, suggest that private vehicle travel is without challenges, it stresses.
“The fundamental problems with transport in Cape Town include urban sprawl, car dominance and an inefficient public transport system that lacks integration. New roads will not solve this,” Rob Quintas, the city’s MMC for urban mobility, tells the FM. “The existing and growing Cape Town population can be accommodated with expanded public transport and well-located, walkable mixed-use densification.”
Quintas says the city’s plan identifies rail as the long-term backbone of Cape Town’s public transport system, supported by buses, MBTs, walking and cycling.
“The focus needs to be on improving the safety, reliability, affordability and integration of services, while making it easier for people to access stations, stops and interchanges. Through continued service recovery, improved operational reliability and stronger multimodal integration, rail can ultimately fulfil its role as the backbone of Cape Town’s public transport network,” he argues.
All eyes on rail
Talk of an integrated public transport system is far from new. But for the plan to succeed, authorities will need to overcome a fragmented approach.
“You’ve got so many parties, different budgets, different authorities, different department heads, different visions,” says Fortune, who’s also a specialist consultant for the World Bank. He uses the example of rail, which is a national entity; MBTs, which are predominantly privately owned but regulated by provincial government; and locally run bus rapid transit. He says a primary reason integration hasn’t happened yet is these multiple authorities.
“We need an integrated public transport system,” he says. “It’s quite clear that rail should be the backbone. Rail moves people quickly and cheaply for long distances.”
Moolman agrees. “Transport management is currently split across national, provincial and municipal entities and two state-owned enterprises. Devolving passenger rail and transit functions to the metro would put rail, bus rapid transit, municipal road maintenance and local spatial planning under one accountable authority,” he says.
Rail makes sense — and it’s deeply underutilised. Fortune remembers that when he started working as a junior transport planner in the late 1990s, there were 1-million daily transport trips in the city, of which 600,000 were on rail. Figures from earlier this year show just 200,000 metro rail trips, and that’s despite a growing city.
There are moves to change the rail backbone of the city. The plan includes the city’s support of efforts by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to recover the rail service. Already, the national government has a plan in place for “the future devolution of urban rail to municipalities, guided by a national devolution strategy”.
While this has been welcomed by the city, it warns that devolution will require funding from the national government.
It also requires careful assessment, says Fortune. “Devolution needs to happen to the most appropriate level of government. That assessment still needs to be done. Merits of provincial ownership should also be investigated, considering the city will grow beyond its current municipal boundaries by 2050.”
The city goes beyond just rail in its transport plan, recognising the importance of MBTs. “Whereas historically some transport planning has sought to displace MBTs entirely from the public transport system, it is now clear that not only are MBTs an integral part of the current transport system, but they will also continue to be so indefinitely,” its strategy document says.
“Furthermore, MBTs as a mode have advantages that make them highly suitable for specific roles in the system. Reform initiatives should aim to incorporate them into the public transport system in a way that leans into their advantages and mitigates their disadvantages.”
As always in Cape Town, the issue of housing looms large. As Moolman tells it, building more affordable housing in well-located areas will also help mitigate the transport crisis. In fact, among the 23 largest firms in the Western Cape that completed a chamber survey, affordable housing was rated as a serious constraint.
“Historical spatial planning put low- and middle-income workers far from the commercial and industrial centres where the jobs are, and the commute is what that distance costs. Building affordable housing along established transit corridors lets workers rely on scheduled public transport rather than private cars or low-capacity road transport and shortens the trip.”
Enter the politicians
Of course, with the local government election looming, public transport in Cape Town has become a campaigning issue. Last week, ActionSA mayoral candidate and MP Dereleen James put the issue in the spotlight.
She announced her party’s plans to make rides on the MyCiTi bus service free on weekdays. To partially fund the free weekday trips, the party proposes a tourist levy on short-term rental accommodation.
“As part of this plan, ActionSA will also work towards the introduction of a MyCape card allowing seamless payment and transfers between Prasa, MyCiTi and MBTs. Cities are for the people who live in them,” she says.
Transport is also something Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis emphasised in the final council speech of his term in August, where he stated his case for re-election.
“We imagined a Cape Town with a functioning and integrated public transport system … so we built an incredible continuous piece of civil engineering that stretches all the way from Claremont to the very furthest points of Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha — the Cape Flats expansion of our MyCiTi bus service.
“We argued relentlessly for the devolution of the passenger rail system until, at last, earlier this year it was put in writing that devolution will happen, the question now only being ‘when’ and not ‘if,’” he told the council.
One thing is clear: transport will be top of the agenda when the administration starts its term after the November election.
