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Showing posts from April, 2024

Cape Town's MyCiti a wasteful vanity project

Cape Town's MyCiti Cape Flats phase under construction is arguably the single most significant example of wasteful expenditure in the city right now. Costing R8.5 billion, when complete, it will put Cape Town Stadium in second place.  UCT associate professor of civil engineering and transport, Romano del Mistro said at master's degree seminars I attended (2006/7) that public transport projects' costs must not exceed their benefit to citizens. He was talking about Gautrain, a very expensive political legacy project, but said the principle applied to MyCiti and other rapid bus transit systems too.  Already certain MyCiti routes in the City Bowl and Table View (the original route) have had to close because they were unviable. But the city's politicians and planners have not learned the lesson.  They're pushing ahead with another grand project - dedicated, exclusive bus lanes, sky bridges, expropriating houses to make way for the extra wide roads - rather than the simpl...

Winde's Western Cape "pro poor budget" election spin

 The DA has repeatedly claimed that through their sole efforts they're creating jobs in the Western Cape, and, therefore, unemployment is the lowest in the country. The latest is Western Cape MEC for finance and economic opportunities Mireille Wenger (March 23) and Premier Alan Winde.  Both also mention, compared to nationally, the WC has a higher quality of life (HDI) and lower inequality - a negligibly lower Gini is purportedly proof of their success (note it's their success, not the people's who make the region what it is). Several years ago various DA members including then leader Mmusi Maimane and finance spokesman Geordin Hill-Lewis claimed the DA in the WC "created" between 400,000 and 600,000 "new jobs [sic]" (the number varied depending on the person speaking) between 2009 and 2019. They used either the official or expanded (discouraged jobseeker) unemployment rates, whichever was favourable to their interpretation of unemployment numbers. Incid...