GOOD Statement by Sandra Dickson, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor:
The City of Cape Town BRT (Bus Rapid Transit – MyCiTi) public transport system is regarded as one of the best-performing Bus systems in South Africa. Over the past decade, billions of rand have been invested into MyCiTi through dedicated bus lanes, stations, depots, feeder services, fleet expansion, and transport control infrastructure.
Much of this funding came from the National Treasury through the Public Transport Network Grant (PTNG), which formed part of South Africa’s broader Integrated Public Transport Network (IPTN) strategy launched in the mid-2000s.
Nationally, more than R80 billion has been spent on IPTN and BRT systems over roughly two decades. However, during the November 2025 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), National Treasury effectively acknowledged in Parliament that the national IPTN/BRT programme had failed to deliver public transport improvements proportional to the scale of funding invested.
These concerns were repeated in the 2026 Estimates of National Expenditure (Vote 40: Transport) and during oversight discussions before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Transport in 2026.
Treasury highlighted implementation delays, incomplete transport corridors, lower-than-expected passenger volumes in some cities, operational sustainability concerns, and increasing financial pressure on municipalities.
As a result, Treasury has now started restructuring and scaling back portions of the Public Transport Network Grant programme.
The concern is not that MyCiTi is about to collapse.
The concern is that one of the major national funding pipelines used to support and expand BRT systems is now being reduced because Treasury no longer believes the programme delivered sufficient value relative to the billions spent nationally.
This creates a long-term financial risk for municipalities, including Cape Town. Large-scale transport systems like MyCiTi require not only capital funding to build infrastructure. They also require continuous operational funding for maintenance, security, staffing, fleet replacement, and future expansion.
At the same time, municipalities are under growing pressure to fund ageing sewer infrastructure, electricity network upgrades, water systems, roads, and other core services.
The national debate has therefore shifted from simply building BRT systems to whether cities can sustainably afford to maintain and expand them over the long term without continued large-scale Treasury support.
National Transport must identify Cities that commit to linking spatial planning, transit-oriented development, and development priorities to BRT routes and stations in order to continue to fund BRT projects there. BRT systems are only truly viable if they operate in a transformed urban space. If Cape Town doesn’t address its spatial apartheid logic, then the MyCiTi is at risk of not attracting sufficient passenger numbers.
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