GOOD Speech delivered during Mobility Department budget vote in the Western Cape Provincial Legislature by Brett Herron, Unite for Change Leadership Council Member & GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament:
This budget rightly recognises that economic growth depends on how efficiently we move people and goods.
We see this in the allocations before us: for example, over R270 million for the George Integrated Public Transport Network.
We also welcome targeted interventions like the Jobseeker Travel Voucher Programme, which acknowledges the real cost of looking for work in a deeply unequal city.
Though we have argued that with more innovation this could be expanded to free public transport for all in the off-peak.
These are important investments. But the fact that free public transport in the off-peak cannot be implemented is because we have failed to integrate our public transport network and services.
This government continues to acknowledge a fundamental problem: the lack of integration and interoperability across our public transport network.
And yet, where it has the power to act, it has failed to do so.
The Province frequently calls for the devolution of functions. We hear strong arguments for greater control over rail. We hear calls for policing powers to be assigned downward.
But when it comes to public transport integration, something already within reach, there has been silence, and more importantly, inaction.
In 2014, an agreement was signed between the City, the Province, and Golden Arrow Bus Services. In 2015, the assignment of the contracting authority function was formalised.
This created a clear, practical pathway for the City to integrate Golden Arrow and MyCiTi services into a single, coordinated system.
That was 12 years ago.
And in those 12 years, there has been no meaningful progress to implement this integration – it isn’t even mentioned as a solution to the department’s own cited risk: being lack of integration.
How can this government continue to call for devolution in principle, while failing to implement it in practice where it already has both the framework and some of the authority?
Because integration is not just about infrastructure spending, it is about governance.
It is about whether a commuter can move across the city without facing fragmented routes and multiple fare systems.
It is about whether our transport system is designed around people, or around institutional boundaries.
If we are serious about lowering the cost of job-seeking, about improving mobility, and about enabling economic growth, then we must move beyond pilot programmes and fragmented investments.
We must act.
Our commuters do not need more promises of integration.
They need a government willing to implement.
GOOD Manifesto on Civic Engagement: Encouraging active community participation in governance.
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