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News Archive January 2010 South American systems studied
| South American systems studied |
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| Tuesday, 11 January 2011 |
A Rea Vaya team recently spent time in Mexico and Colombia to study the operation models of BRTs in those countries.
AUTOMATED fare collection was among the four core areas investigated by a group of Rea Vaya delegates on the study tour of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in Mexico and Colombia.
The Rea Vaya interim ticket The team were guests of GTZ, the German development bank. GTZ has provided great support to the Rea Vaya project in terms of the design and implementation of Phase 1A.
The 10-day visit included stops in Bogotá and Cali in Colombia, Mexico City and Guadalajara in Mexico. It was the team's first exposure to the South American systems, although other officials have previously visited the continent to study successful BRT systems – among them Bogotá's Transmilenio – in 2007 and 2009.
"We looked at automated fare collection, the operations model, depots and their financial model," said the deputy director for Rea Vaya finance expenditure, Boitumelo Setlalentoa.
Rea Vaya is working towards implementing its automated fare collection system and is hopeful that such a system could be in place by June 2011. At present, Rea Vaya still uses an interim paper ticket system that will be replaced by the automatic fare collection system to radically improve customer service and revenue control.
On their trip, the Rea Vaya officials observed operations and studied how the South American systems helped disabled citizens and pensioners. "Although Rea Vaya caters for people with disabilities at a high level, Rea Vaya has not yet introduced Braille information notices," said Setlalentoa.
"We looked at how they do their scheduling and ticketing," she said. "It includes items like back-up for electricity so that you can keep on working even if there is no power as well as having a system whereby when ticket prices change, it can be done on our system without any delay."
Discussions about depots yielded ideas on how Johannesburg's can be improved. "Depots over there are world class. We are currently renting the space, but building a new state of the art depot will commence in February 2011 and should be completed within a year."
The financial model used by the Colombians and Mexicans was also of great interest. "Over there, the revenue covers the bus operating costs and we want to move towards making current services more cost-effective here," she explained.
A challenge in Joburg was figuring out how to encourage people to use Rea Vaya instead of other less environmentally friendly services, so the envoy looked at how the foreign systems used marketing and advertising in their buses and how these methods could be put into practice locally.
"The visit was about improving our structures, operating and financial model, and it is nice to see what we are working towards," Setlalentoa concluded. "It seems that we are generally on par and not too far behind."
The group was in South America from 16 to 27 November.
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