Car Free Day

So today is national car free day - people are supposed to give up their cars and make use of public transport. Walking up to campus today (I gave up waiting for the Jammie after 5 minutes; thought I could rather do with the exercise), it seems that car free day is a total failure. Both the M3 and main road was jam packed as usual and the Golden Arrow busses were not carrying any more passengers than usual.

Personally, after living in Cape Town for almost 6 years without a car; I don't really have many bad things to say about public transport. In my experience, public transport works quite well and it's not too expensive; but only to certain places. My 2 biggest problems with public transport in Cape Town is that
a) its almost non existent at night - there are some night time Golden Arrow busses; but its almost faster to walk than to wait to catch one (I know; I have timed them once)
b) Some very important routes are just not served - try to get to the airport for example.

With 2010, public transport is going to be an important issue - there aren't that many rental cars out there after all. Getting to Newlands is relatively easy - just catch the train. But getting from the airport to the hotels, or from the hotels to the train station - that's going to be the difficult part. I think that all major transportation nodes (ports, stations, airports) should have public transport links - I just don't see it happening any time soon.