For the third straight summer season travellers to Cape Town International Airport have been seeing a 100m-wide invitation in the arrivals plaza to travel from “Airport to City” — and probably walked away confused.
The award-winning airport’s MyCiTi station and related bus network were created in the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Travellers and airport employees alike could charge past the Settlers Way standstill in a dedicated bus lane for R50, reaching the city bowl in a reliable 30 minutes or less, at 20-minute intervals. But the pandemic severely curbed tourism in 2020 and 2021.
The MyCiTi service ceased on December 1 2022. Mayoral committee member for urban mobility Roberto Quintas cited high operating costs and few passengers, though the city would “investigate more cost-effective and innovative solutions to resume the service”.
He tells the FM: “It was one of the most unwilling and regrettable decisions to have to make, for a host of reasons.” Two years later, he says the service remains suspended indefinitely.
The airport route served a vital purpose, Quintas says. “The reality, though, is that other things have happened” since the service debuted 14 years ago. For one, air travellers can count on e-hailing services such as Bolt and Uber. He also emphasises that “all of our resources and man and brain power are invested heavily into MyCiTi Phase 2A”, which will link Claremont and Wynberg to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain by way of the Cape Flats. Quintas says by 2027 electric buses will be plying those two new trunk lines, including the first-of-its-kind in South Africa “sky circle” above Govan Mbeki Road and Jan Smuts Drive in Lansdowne.
Capital expenditure such as Phase 2A and fleet electrification is usually funded through national fiscus grants via the national department of transport. But operational costs fall on the municipality, meaning the city council’s fiduciary responsibility to ratepayers tips the scales against more heavily subsidised services such as the airport shuttle. Quintas says the airport service cost about R1m a month until its suspension, and on average the route carried roughly 1.6 passengers on each bus throughout the day.
“In South Africa, in Cape Town, and anywhere else in the world, municipal bus services are heavily subsidised,” says Quintas, who has represented Hout Bay and Llandudno for the DA since 2016. He notes that municipalities don’t run public transport to turn a profit, at least not directly. He points to a rough guiding ratio to illustrate how subsidising “an affordable, reliable, safe public transport offering” amplifies economic potential.
“Ultimately, we understand that every single rand invested in public transport equates to another four entering the local economy. We are committed to providing that service at subsidy. But the airport shuttle was not sustainable financially. I appreciate that government is not a business — though it would be better if many government departments acted a bit more like a business.”
It was one of the most unwilling and regrettable decisions to have to make, for a host of reasons
— Roberto Quintas
Quintas would like to involve the business community in restoring an airport service, and the city is open to considering public-private partnerships or concessionary service arrangements.
Down the hall from Quintas’s office in the civic centre, James Vos (DA) brainstorms ways to maximise that 1:4 public expenditure ratio in Cape Town’s favour. He says that for locals and tourists alike, renewing the service would be a “game-changer”.
“Connectivity like the airport service significantly enhances destination management and the overall value we offer as a city, aligning with our goal of being a globally competitive destination,” says Vos, mayoral committee member for economic growth.
His language echoes the adverts that Invest Cape Town — the public face of the city’s enterprise & investment department — has placed all over the airport. The posters bill a city with “world-class infrastructure, a thriving green economy and a dynamic business landscape”.
While its relative success might have been tethered to the football event it was built to facilitate, the defunct MyCiTi airport station clashes with the Cape Town those posters conjure, promoting the city as a serious contender for foreign direct investment. As tourism numbers grow, so does exposure to that specific dissonance.
Airports by their nature often double as municipal embassies, welcoming delegation after delegation of captive audiences. According to Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), Cape Town airport’s rebound is unquestioned. It welcomed 161,000 foreign arrivals and 362,000 domestic arrivals in December 2024.
Quintas isn’t worried that the white elephant at Cape Town’s welcome mat stands to stoke safety concerns among international arrivals.
He adds that foreign travellers accustomed to MyCiTi equivalents in their home countries often self-select into the network once they’re settled in town, and that a system upgrade will soon remove a small but significant barrier to entry for short-term visitors. By 2027, passengers will be able to tap onto a MyCiTi bus using a bank card or virtual wallet — today’s stored-value cards will remain an option for cash-based customers — and transit-savvy tourists can download the MyCiTi app to navigate Cape Town with real-time status updates.
As Vos sees it, all forms of connectivity count: “Tourism already contributes R27bn annually to Cape Town’s economy.” His focus is a five-point plan that includes landing more planes, docking more ships and attracting major events and conferences. “Connectivity, whether by air, sea or land, underpins all of these efforts. In 2023, our airport processed more than 10-million passengers, a record.” In 2024 it processed a total of 10.4-million passengers.
Vos says he has engaged Acsa and the city’s mobility department to advocate for a public transit option to and from the airport, noting that it’s a “prime opportunity for a public-private partnership” — but not to restore the link as it was.
As Joburg flirts with Gautrain expansion, planners haven’t forgotten that Cape Town’s airport is just 3.2km from an existing commuter rail corridor.
In 2013, then Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) CEO Lucky Montana (since dismissed) described the MyCiTi airport service as “an intermediary solution” until Prasa established a rail link. That hasn’t even started.
Quintas says an airport rail link is “without a doubt what a long-term vision for Cape Town should entail. Certainly in terms of an integrated public transport system, there’s an absolute design line to that outcome in the future, whether it’s a conventional rail or light rail. There are so many different opportunities potentially.”
Prasa runs all passenger railways in the country, but the agency and the city have been inching closer to at least an operating partnership. Quintas concedes that the Gautrain receives large subsidies from the Gauteng provincial government, “but it is also very much a business, and it’s evident by the prices of its tickets”. A peak-hour Gautrain ride from OR Tambo International to Sandton costs R219 and R248 to Pretoria, which means it often outprices Uber. Quintas makes it clear that Cape Town’s transit priorities lie elsewhere, and that delivering a “reliable service that is going to cost [residents] less” ought to dispel the notion that Cape Town caters only to the rich.
Even when Phase 2A opens, though, Capetonians commuting to the airport for work still won’t have a public transit option. Not all airport employees have staff transport, and restoring the MyCiTi service would not help those who depend on minibus taxis, which are notoriously unreliable.
Quintas sees MyCiTi Phase 2A as a utilitarian project for “the most densely populated and most economically vulnerable part of our city”. Connecting those communities to opportunities in other parts of the city, he says, is “how you build societies, economies and communities; that’s how you build a city”.
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