Life in No Motion

Today I attended a conference on the challenges that climate change poses to cities. Every day thousands of people migrate from the countryside to rapidly growing boom towns. Mega cities have to provide water and electricity, housing, health care and education to millions of people looking for a better life. And they have to move them: from cribs to Kindergardens, from homes to schools and offices, from suburbs and slums to the centres of cities.

Many cities have well-developed and world renowned public transport systems: The tube in London, the Metro in Paris, the Met in New York – they may have their flaws, but they do a bloody good job moving millions of people every day!

Most cities in developing countries don’t have an underground system; they don’t have a bus network; they don’t have any public transport infrastructure at all. And so people rely on road transport – on their own cars if they are lucky and on taxis and minibuses otherwise.




South Africa is no different. Until the Gautrain comes into operation next year, there is no public transport between Johannesburg and Pretoria and every day people drive the 45km between the two cities – making it... yes, you know it... the busiest road in the Southern hemisphere!

Traffic is terrible in both directions, but it is worst driving from Pretoria to Joburg in the mornings and back in the afternoon. To attend a meeting at 9am in Joburg, you have three options: A - Leave before 6.30am and find a nice spot to relax for two hours; B – Leave between 6.30 and 8.30am and be prepared to spend two hours on the road; C - Leave at 8.45am and arrive 15minutes late, but awake and relaxed for the meeting. The same applies to afternoons and leaving Johannesburg after 2.30pm comes close to a suicide mission – in fact, roads are best avoided between 3 and 6pm.

So today, having spent all day discussing the challenges of urbanisation and the importance of providing reliable and affordable public infrastructure, I left Midrand (half way between Joburg and Pretoria) at 4pm.

I was lucky and managed to drive most of the way to Sandton. People heading to Pretoria weren’t quite as lucky... Between Midrand and Sandton the cars on the other side of the road stood still – bumper to bumper. Not even driving in first gear slow motion. Nope, 18.4km of no movement at all!

And that was just the part of the highway that I saw – chances are the traffic jam continued further past Midrand and into Johannesbug! And as I drove off the highway, cars were queuing another two kilometres to join the traffic jam!

Madness! Absolute utter complete madness!

And today was just a normal day – no football, no public holiday, no end of school, no nothing... just a fairly normal day on Gauteng roads!



I could not help but feel sorry for all those drivers, who had to endure this frustration and wasted at least three hours every day... sitting in a standing car on the highway... listening to bad radio shows...

And as I thought about it, I could totally understand why people speed, why they put their foot down and try to overtake anyone who is going marginally slower than they! It’s because if they don’t, chances are they will end up like the people on the other side of the road – sitting in their car... on the highway... standing still... every day... for hours... and hours... and hours...



PS: I came across an article about the taxi industry in South Africa a few days after posting this. According to an AA study, drivers in South Africa face a one in ten chance of being involved in a car accident ever year; for minibuses this rate jumps up to one in two! On average, only every third car has any form of car insurance and the number has been falling over the past years. Good thing then that Government has just mooted plans to introduce compulsory third party vehicle insurance…