The Jugaad of Gestures and Mini-bus Taxis - Jo'burg's PRT (People's Rapid Transit) system

People familiar with Africa, or who have seen any kind of documentary about urban Sub-Saharan Africa would recognize a single ubiquitous element in the backdrop - the white mini-bus taxi. They were old Ford Transit vans during my 70s-80s childhood in Nigeria. Now they are solidly represented by the Japanese motor industry. As expected these mini-buses are the backbone for transportation across the Jo'burg metro area. They evolved due to apartheid era policies for creating race based townships outside the city without providing and public transit connecting the workers to their workplaces. Public buses were out of bounds for colored folks. So they improvised and organically developed the mini-bus transportation network that now serves a majority of the population's transportation needs.

Minibus Taxi atmosphere

Post-Apartheid, these mini-vans were organised into associations that were given specific routes form them to ply on. This was primarily done to avoid the frequent (and often deadly) clashes between rival operators trying to gather as many passengers as possible. So now the mini vans are primarily based out of specific townships that connect specific destinations to those townships. But here's the catch! How does one know, which van is going where? There are no signs, numbers or designated colors that would help a commuter figure out which van goes where. Necessity being the mother of invention, we have a unique Jugaad of crazy hand signals that commuters make, letting the van driver know of their intended destination!

For the uninitiated, this is a weird thing to notice while driving along Jo'burg's roads. Initially you feel that the people on the street are highly offended by you, and are showing their displeasure with rude hand gestures. But then logic prevails (and clearly I cannot offend an entire city, I nowhere close to being famous), and you realize it a unique organic sign language that has come up to address the challenges of last mile connectivity. It has become so elaborate that some say it is the 12th official language of South Africa[1]. Here is a matrix of hand gestures that was developed for the 2010 Soccer world cup -

I had to take quick classes from my local contacts to understand what the signs mean't and how they are applied in context to where you are. Point your index finger up if you want to go to the CBD; point your finger down for a local destination. And then, it gets more elaborate with many neighborhoods having their unique hand gestures. One can find many such examples on the net and Youtube to amuse oneself. 

riding shotgun in a white bus taxi

Township residents waiting for white bus taxis to go home from a local mall

Boarding a Minibus Taxi

Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution

This entire taxi transportation system is so successful in filling the void left by apartheid era public transit systems that almost 25% of all trips in South Africa today are made by taxis; and of public transit modes, they can carry up to 77% of the share of  urban commuters[2]. These numbers would be phenomenal for a typical American city, which would consider it as a successful public transportation system if they could get to these numbers.

Despite such high utility of these taxis, they are generally looked down upon as dangerous, unsafe and nefarious. Much of the characterization comes from the apparent chaotic state of organisations of taxi associations, and their history of violence between taxi associations. It seems the approach by the local authorities is more of controlling them, rather than using them as an active solution to much of their transportation problems.

In the recent past the federal and regional governments have invested heavily in mass transit systems with a regional commuter rail -the Gautrain, a BRT system - the Rea Vaya, and an expanded local municipal bus service (PUTCO). Much of which came through the infrastructure upgrades investments made for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. While the Guatrain is a regional rail system, the Rea Vaya, and local buses seem compete with the Taxis. And they seem to be loosing the competition. The Rea Vaya, as per locals, is too expensive when compared to taxis, and doesn't drop people off closer to their township homes. Similarly buses too have issues with last mile connectivity that the taxi's gladly address. with low density townships being the major source of commuters in Jo'burg, the fixed route BRTs will need a lot of housing/employment densification around their stations to make them competitive with the Mini Bus taxis. So it begs the question what kind of ridership projections were made prior to constructing the BRT system? Maybe they believe in the idiom "if you build it, they will come".

A Rea Vaya Station in Braamfontein  near Jo'Burg's CBD

As I see it, the authorities missed a great opportunity for coming up with a unique solution for Jo'burg's transportation needs - merging the ubiquity and familiarity of the Minibus taxis with the technological advancements in transit systems management/real-time ridership demand assessment, and; the advent of smartphones. Imagine a hybrid Minibus taxi system that functions partly like a BRT with  dedicated lanes with real time demand and fleet management of ride-hailing services such as Uber or Lyft. With some government regulations to improve Mini Bus Taxi quality and comfort standards, (and possibly using fuel-hybird engines), this would make the Mini Buses Taxis more reliable modes, as well as provide the Taxi associations better control of their members, improving both their image and bottom-lines.

Well, something like that is in the inception mode. Afta Robot is a mobile app based service, much like the ride-hailing services, that helps connect Mini Bus taxis to riders. This at the moment is a fledgling entrepreneurship that could be easily become a public-private partnership based public transit service. If successfully scaled, it could revolutionize public transit across major African cities such as Nairobi and Lagos, where similar taxi systems are prevalent, along with robust mobile data infrastructure, and be a truly unique contextual answer to public transportation issues.

After note: 
My experience using them in Johannesburg randomly over two month was mostly pleasant, with friendly cabbies, and accommodating fellow travelers.


[1]http://www.inyourpocket.com/southafrica/johannesburg/Getting-Around/Public-Transport/Minibus-taxi-hand-signs_124554v
[2]http://www.thredbo-conference-series.org/downloads/thredbo10_papers/thredbo10-plenary-Walters.pdf