Fin24 reports that according to the City of Cape Town’s Mayco member for urban development, Felicity Purchase, poor households in Cape Town spend about 43% of their income on transport.  

That was why the City planned to spend a total of R2.9bn over the next three financial years on extending the MyCiti bus service in the south-eastern part of the Metro, thus linking Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain with, among others, Claremont and surrounding suburbs.  At the same time, the City also needed to ensure better management of the informal minibus taxi service in the city, Purchase said on Wednesday at a ‘City Meets Business’ event.  "We have to revitalise the rail system in Cape Town.  It must form the backbone of transport in the City," said Purchase, adding that it was government’s job to run the trains, and in this regard the City was having studies done on how the rail system could be fixed.  Two years ago about 650,000 people commuted by train each day compared to about 250,000 today, while two years ago there were 88 trains compared to 56 currently.

• Read the full original of the above report by Carin Smith at Fin24

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