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Public transport in SA is not user-friendly enough

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alchemyst

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I use public transport almost every day to get to and from work. I am a very happy user of the Gautrain train system. This causes some interesting problems and makes my life much harder than it should be when I have to go anywhere other than between my home and work.

The Gautrain website is relatively informative about where the bus stops are and where the associated Gautrain buses go. The routes are presented in one interactive map on their website. I would have preferred if these routes were added to the Google Maps interface, because planning a trip means having two maps open – one view to the Google Maps interface so that I can search for the place I want to go and another view tediously synced to that one so that I can see if there is a bus near where I want to go. Sadly, this is the most user friendly public transport system I can use in my country. Here are some significantly more difficult-to-use alternatives.

Tshwane bus

I work at the University of Pretoria. Because I take the train to work most days, I don’t have access to a car when I am there. This means I have often tried to figure out how the Tshwane bus system works. Unfortunately I have never successfully planned a trip using this system as their timetables are completely opaque to me. The timetables are online, but the routes are simply listed in “Alphabetical order” and “Clockwise order” using the names of the routes. It appears that the routes are mostly concerned with going in and out of the CBD from the named suburb. Now, I lived in Brooklyn for five years, so let’s have a look at the Brooklyn route:

BROOKLYN (10) 


ROUTE OUT: From Thabo Sehume (Andries) between Pretorius & Francis Baard (Schoeman). Drive along Thabo Sehume, left along Jeff Masemola (Jacob Maré), Rissik, Justice Mahomed (Walker, Charles), Atterbury, Lois, Garsfontein, Corobay, Tucker, Gina, Corobay, Garsfontein, Anton van Wouw, Beethoven, Chopin, Duvernoy (Terminus). 


ROUTE IN: Via Duvernoy, Lilken, Rover, Rudolf, De Klerk, Hermina, Rudolf, Rover, Beval, Coert Steynberg, Hugh McKinnel, John Scott, Issie Smuts, Duvernoy, Chopin,Beethoven, Anton van Wouw, Garsfontein, Corobay, Tucker, Gina, Corobay, Garsfontein, further the same in an opposite direction as far as cnr. of Justice Mahomed (Walker) & Bourke, via Justice Mahomed (Walker), Scheiding, Bosman, to City.

I challenge anyone to use this without a pretty detailed street map in their hands. Doesn’t it make more sense to present this information in map form? Of course it does, that’s why this website exists, where a couple of people have taken it on themselves to get this information in map form, like this:

Brooklyn 10 in graphical form

Isn’t that much easier to understand? That website also allows you to add and remove a variety of routes so you can see which ones intersect and so on. Good stuff. Unfortunately it doesn’t show the location of the stops, nor does it assist you in route planning, so I can’t see how to get from the Groenkloof Nature reserve to the Menlyn Park Shopping centre in an easy way. In their defence, it does seem as though Tshwane have gone to the trouble of building a complete map of the bus system as one massive PDF which is designed to be printed out on A0 paper. Because most of us have an A0 printer hanging about. The big PDF does show you how poorly the bus system is designed to get around town rather than just go from your suburb to the CBD and back – there are almost no buses connecting around Pretoria, all just spokes emanating from the CBD hub:

The hub-and-spoke Tshwane bus system
So, this is not a good system for me to use to get where I want to go. I suppose I should be using taxis, but I’m a big fan of planning my route, so I’m not that comfortable with the idea of going to the taxi rank and asking around to find out which taxi will take me where I want to go.
Another hope is the new Tshwane Bus Rapid Transit system, A Re Yeng. Right now that website doesn’t contain much information, but at leas the proposal document contains maps of the routes.

Johannesburg

The event that prompted this post was me trying to work out if I could get from Pretoria to the University of Johannesburg Kingsway Campus using public transport. I knew I could easily get to Gautrain Park station, but how to get West from there? I had seen a BRT station outside of the UJ campus, so I though I would be able to take that. The Johannesburg system is called Rea Vaya. I went to their website and was initially pleasantly surprised. They have maps of their routes! Unfortunately the interactive map appeared to show that there wasn’t a Rea Vaya route that went to the Kingsway campus, only a Joburg Metro bus, which wasn’t running at the times I needed to get to my destination. Luckily, I Googled around and found this brochure which has a more up-to-date map and mentions UJ Kingsway Campus as a stop on the T3 line. Armed with this knowledge I was able to find the T3 route “map”:
The T3 Rea Vaya “Map”
This is worth almost less than the Tshwane bus route descriptions as it is not searchable (being an image) and it gives no indication of direction. This kind of description is useful on the bus as it gives you a sense of how many stops you need to wait before you get off. It is useless off the bus or when planning routes, as it doesn’t allow for any kind of discovery of the information.
An interesting extra point is that the website makes it very clear that you need a smart card to use the Rea Vaya bus. The page about smart cards proclaims “If you don’t have a smart card yet, you can get one – for free – from any of the five Rea Vaya customer care centres.” Of course, the exact location of these customer care centres is left as a delightful treasure hunt for the user. They aren’t indicated on any of the maps I found on the website. In fact, the only mention of customer care centres I could find was in the above mentioned brochure where they list the following six customer care centres:
  1. Carlton Centre East Rea Vaya Station (CBD)
  2. Johannesburg Art Gallery Station (Joubert Park)
  3. Orlando Police Station (Orlando)
  4. UJ Sophiatown Station (Melville)
  5. Indingiliza Terminus (Dobsonville)
  6. Bosmont Station (Bosmont)
Clearly this system is targeted at people who already know the Johannesburg area intimately. How would a traveller coming from overseas, landing in OR Thambo and then proceeding using the Gautrain to Park Station obtain a Rea Vaya smart card? I suppose they would need to find each of these locations on their map and then perhaps walk there.

Update: For future reference, I have determined that the Johannesburg Art Gallery station (number 2 in the list above) is the Rea Vaya customer service centre closest to the Gautrain Park station, by using this interactive map. It must be said that you still need to do way too much work to get to this information.

When I tweeted @ReaVayaBus to seek help (“If I arrive at Park station on @TheGautrain, but I have not yet bought a smart card, can I buy a smart card there?”) , I got the noncomittal reply “You can get you Rea Vaya Smartcardat any Rea Vaya customere care Centre”. Because “You can get a smartcard at the Johannesburg Art Gallery station, 10 minutes walk from Park Station” would make it too easy.

I’m not even going to start with the analysis of the Johannesburg Metrobus system as their routes are even more difficult to ascertain that the Twshwane ones.

How it could (should) be

Compared to my recent experience navigating through Barcelona, a city where I don’t even understand the language of most of the people or signs, public transport in SA is a nightmare. In Barcelona, I could use Google Maps on my phone to navigate to a place by simply typing its name into my phone. I was routed along the nearest set of public transport services completely automatically. I didn’t have to worry about finding stuff at all. In fact, the Gautrain has at least been incorporated into Google Maps, but the bus systems have not yet been, so I can get close but not really all the way. The Google Maps transit system is amazing. I can route and plan my journey with amazing ease, taking the times of the trains into account properly and it would allow me to figure out my cross-overs to the bus, but of course, that information is not on Google right now. If I were involved in the Johannesburg or Tshwane transport system I would be trying as hard as I could to work with them to get the information on their systems. This would be a thousand times better than trying to develop a system themselves.
All route planning should be like this
Now I suppose I’ve spent far too much time ranting about this, but I felt like I should at least get something out of all the time I’ve spent on these websites. My final decision was to take the car.

Comments

  1. Unknown Avatar
    Unknown

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Unknown Avatar
    Unknown

    What? I mean to edit my comment, not delete it.

    Anyway, what I had said was that I'm attending a workshop at UJ later this week and I was interested to see if you had solved the problem of how to get there. But it sounds complicated… so I will just end up driving as well.

    Reply
  3. Carl Sandrock Avatar
    Carl Sandrock

    There is a customer service centre at the Johannesburg Art Gallery station, visible on this map: http://www.reavaya.org.za/inner-city-route-map – seems to be about 10 minutes walk from Gautrain Park station. To get to UJ you need to take the T3 bus.

    Reply

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