In the summer of 2017 I took advantage of a cheap air fare
to visit South Africa for the first time.
I included Cape Town on my travels, and as usual, sought to use local
public transport to get around. Prior to
my arrival I was aware Cape Town had two separate bus networks, but wasn’t
aware of the newer network’s adoption of some of the more interesting elements
of bus rapid transit. Having never been
to Curitiba or Bogota it was my first time seeing ‘proper’ platform boarding on
a bus. I didn't have time for an extensive ride around the MyCiti system, but here's a few images from the travels I did make.
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| The Airport Station looks like the entrance to a metro system: the physical attributes and gate line do not suggest a bus-based service, or even light rail (which typically has open platforms too). |
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| Airport services are in the hands of rigid Volvo B7Ls. This one is at the down town 'Civic Centre' bus station, |
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| Some of the MyCiti vehicles have two third height doors and a ramp that folds out which also forms the bottom third of the door. |
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| Some MyCiti services are operated by articulated Scania buses. Most of the buses on MyCiti were constructed locally - I presume using chassis imported from Europe mated with a locally built body. |
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| Boarding a MyCiti bus in the Civic Centre bus station. |
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| On some buses the ramp folds down from inside the bus. This is the Airport service, numbered A01. |
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| The down town Civic Centre bus station has many boarding gates. |
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| Entry to most of the MyCiti stations is via ticket gates. There is a contactless smart card system: even single tickets from the airport are issued on a solid plastic smart card (rather than the paper tickets with a chip inside which some systems use, such as Glasgow Subway). I believe the idea is that such tickets should be handed back and re-used, although the gates do not collect them automatically. Beijing Subway uses a similar system for single tickets, where it is a smart card on entry but has to be inserted in to the gate for (re-use) on exit. |
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| A down town Cape Town MyCiti station, with off-side boarding on a central island platform, and again showing ticket gates in use. |
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| View of a MyCiti station from the outside. |
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| Feeder services to MyCiti are also provided using locally built Optare Solo buses. These have an offside door within the low floor area which necessitates the interchange stations to have two platforms: one at the Solo height and one for the high-floor height doors on the main MyCiti service buses. |
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| Connecting buses at the Civic Centre interchange. The rear vehicle is not in service as it is parked at a high floor platform. The front two buses are at platforms which are commensurate with the height of the low floor section of the bus. |
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| The connecting services also use conventional bus stops, such as this one at the V&A Waterfront. |
