STATEMENT BY THE CITY’S MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR TRANSPORT, ALDERMAN FELICITY PURCHASE.
The City of Cape Town wishes to apologies to all Dial-a-Ride service users for the inconvenience experienced due to the delay to the start of the service this year.
We are working together with the service provider and the Provincial Regulatory Entity (PRE) to ensure that the service is timeously restored and that users will not have to look for alternative modes of transport.
Cape Town is the only city that has a disabled-friendly public transport.
As a caring City, we are committed to ensuring that all our commuters, especially those unable to board mainstream public transport, are able to move around the city with ease.
In addition to MyCiti services, we provide the Dial-a-Ride service specifically for people with disabilities. The Dial-a-Ride service is a well-established municipal public transport service with 2 620 users (comprising 350 regular users and 2 270 ad hoc users). The City considers this service as an essential service for people with disabilities to ensure access and mobility to work, education, recreation, health facilities, etc.
This services is provided by a vehicle operating company on a contractual basis.
Unexpected delays were experienced during the procurement of a new long-term six-year contract due an ongoing appeals process.
To ensure continuity of the service, the City Manager has approved the extension of the current contract on a month-to-month basis for a 12-month period while we await the resolution of the appeal process for the long-term six-year contract.
A new contract extension has already been signed and the service will be restored as soon as all the necessary due diligence and approval processes for operating licences and roadworthy tests for each of the 24 vehicles are finalised. This is to ensure that the safety of the users is given priority.
Through our Transport Information Centre (TIC) we are liaising and advising the users on progress as well. Furthermore, as the service operates via a booking system, users planning to use the service in the coming weeks are also being advised on the availability of the service.
Source: City Of Cape Town