Familiar British-designed midibuses work along with full-size vehicles to deliver a bus rapid transit service in South Africa’s second largest city. DANIEL STAZICKER has been to see and photograph them in action.
Over 200 locally assembled Optare Solos play a vital part in delivering MyCiti, a bus rapid transit (BRT) network developed since 2010 in Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa and, with 4.6million residents, the second most populated city in the country after Johannesburg. The population has grown by 500,000 in the past five years alone and car ownership is low.
Horse-drawn trams began operating between Sea Point and Cape Town in 1863, electric trams began in 1894 and motorbuses in 1911. There were trolleybuses from 1935 to 1964, but by the early years of the present century the fast expanding city was served by a complicated, poor and haphazard mixture of suburban trains, conventional diesel buses and taxi-like minibuses.
MyCiti met the aspiration for a locally controlled system that was accessible, comfortable, convenient, reliable, fast, safe and efficient. The stimulus for change was football, specifically South Africa’s success in being selected to host the 2010 Fifa World C…
