No more Gautrain bus in parts of Joburg
For the past two years I was a frequent commuter on the Gautrain bus from Highlands North to the Rosebank Gautrain station.
The buses were a joy to use.
They ran at frequent hours, were always on time and were always well maintained.
Because of my loyal service, I was quite perturbed when a decision was taken to get rid of this bus route completely, in favour of introducing the new routes.
I understand that the reason for this was because there were few customers on the route and it wasn’t generating enough revenue. However, I think the situation should have and could have been handled differently.
What would make logical sense is if the Highlands North bus route was joined with the Melrose Arch route and Norwood was joined with the Killarney route.
In doing so, the Gautrain could carry on servicing the small group of customers which relied on the bus service.
Gautrain’s Kelebogile Machaka responds;
The current changes to some of the existing bus routes and the addition of the new routes follows a comprehensive market research exercise which was conducted last year.
This included engagement with many current as well as prospective bus passengers, and with the relevant municipal and provincial government officials. The purpose of the changes was inter alia to:
- improve the utilisation of Gautrain buses (to get more passengers onto the optimal number of buses to service particular routes)
- improve the utilisation of the train by supporting contra-flow demand during peak periods
- develop new bus routes based on public transport design principles
- complement public transport services provided by other entities such as municipalities with the objective to promote integration and to limit duplication.
Naturally it is not possible to implement each and every person’s route or stop preference and we do apologise if this results in some inconvenience to individual users.
We continue to welcome feedback on the bus routes and your suggestion will be considered for future revisions to the bus service.
We continue to be committed to providing you and all of our customers with the highest standards of service in the industry, and look forward to serving you in the near future.
