Sunday, June 8, 2025

May 2, 2014

This Is Why SA’s Metered Taxi Industry Is Doomed

While local taxi operators desperately scramble to update their tech in a quickly changing industry, their faults are being exposed more and more in mainstream media. Like this one in Business Day.

While local taxi operators desperately scramble to update their tech in a quickly changing industry, their faults are being exposed more and more in mainstream media. Like this one in Business Day.

Simon Reader’s article kicks off with this:

IF THE devil rides into Johannesburg, it will be in a metered taxi — possibly a spluttering, bumperless Toyota Camry whose dishevelled state suggests it has been subjected to a Khulubuse Zuma love-in and is about as welcoming as a small, foul-smelling, very old porch dog (“stoepkakkertjie”).

There are many things to loathe about metered taxis in Johannesburg.

I loathe the way the drivers stand around transport nodes participating in what appears to be some exclusive Richard Mdluli lookey-likey competition. I loathe the vehicles themselves with their broken speedometers or petrol gauges or bent meters. I loathe the mandatory radio stations where the presenter sounds like a furious Shaman standing on a termite mound in rural KwaZulu-Natal about to turn some naughty shepherd into a cat. But most of all, I loathe the costs which are, at best, extortionate and, at worst, greed.

Where is he going with this, you ask?

Click here to read the whole thing.