It has been a week of milestones for the city’s MyCiTi bus service and now the millionth passenger William Makola is planning on selling his BMW to use the service permanently.

On Monday Makola, who lives in Parklands, became the millionth passenger and will receive a six-month free travel pass on the service.

The service not only reached one million passengers, it also got a record 12 500 passengers in one day and reached 100 000 passengers on the airport shuttle service.

'I am selling it because of the bus service. I don’t really need it anymore. The bus provides a very good service,' said Makola.

Makola said the travelling used to cost him R450 a week before he started using the bus.

'I use MyCiTi now and it costs me R20 a day. That's R100 a week or a R350 weekly saving. I drive a BMW. It's a nice car. Some of my colleagues also use MyCiTi. I saw one of our directors on the bus,' said Makola who works for petroleum company Engen.

Maloka also got a special mention during yesterday’s mayoral committee meeting where mayco member for transport, roads and storm-water Brett Herron said Makola would now be selling his car.

Meanwhile, the City of Cape Town is still hard at work trying to finalise compensation for taxi operators who may suffer as a direct result of the MyCiTi service.

Regarding any losses that existing taxi operators may suffer in the Table View area as a direct result of the MyCiTi services, the city has contracted the MyCiTi services in Table View to Kidrogen (Pty) Ltd, a company formed by the five minibus-taxi associations operating in the area, and Sibanye Bus Services,' said Herron.

He said the agreement provided that Kidrogen may request the city to pay part of the losses suffered by taxi owners via the company.

'The other part of any potential losses will be covered by the profit that Kidrogen will make, which it will pay to taxi owners through dividends to its second-tier shareholders, which include the taxi owners who have suffered losses,' said Herron.

He said the amount of losses will be determined through surveys on MyCiTi buses to establish how many of MyCiTi passengers had used the taxi service before the bus service was up and running.





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