Herrie Schalekamp with some of the taxi operators

Herrie Schalekamp is a research officer at the Centre for Transport Studies in the Department of Civil Engineering. Over the past seven years he conducted his PhD research on the business needs and attitudes of minibus-taxi operators and associations in Cape Town. Recently his focus turned to operators in Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha, where the City of Cape Town’s MyCiTi bus system is being rolled out. 

Earlier this year Herrie developed two public-transport-related courses for minibus-taxi operators in the metro-south-east. The courses are on public transport planning and bus operations, and form part of a pilot City-funded capacity- building programme for the minibus-taxi industry. The first of these courses started in May this year, and they have been run on Upper Campus with support from the faculty’s Continuous Professional Development Unit. 

The target audience for the courses is the leadership and members of the minibus-taxi associations that form part of the joint venture company currently operating the MyCiTi N2 Express services, as well as their colleagues who may in future be incorporated in the MyCiTi system. 86 candidates were pre-selected by the joint venture to participate in the courses, and each course is being run four times to accommodate groups of around 20 participants at a time.