Editorial Comment: Ensure Harare gets proper, efficient public transport system

provider, has to provide land for terminuses and workshops, has to lay out bus stops, and agree to the basic route structure.
The service provider owns the buses, with the fleet size dependent on the agreed service in the contract, and will operate these, hiring drivers and mechanics, route supervisors and the like.
The monopoly is required so that, paradoxically, services will be more complete and fares will be as low as possible.
It needs to be remembered that scheduled services, with buses travelling along a particular route at a laid-down time rather than waiting until they are full before they leave, means that on some routes at some times of the day the company will lose money, since the bus will have a lot of empty seats.
Of course at other times, such as when most people want to go to and from work or school, the buses will mostly be full.
But even then the company will need to ensure that on some routes several buses operate at the scheduled time, to ensure everyone can get to work, meaning that a large part of the fleet, and much of the staff, will only be used for around four hours a day, two hours in the morning and two in the late afternoon.
Fares can be set according to recognised formulas. At best these give a reasonable return on investment to an efficient operating company, while giving little or no profit to one badly managed.
At worst the formulas ensure that even a terrible company can make money, regardless of how bad its services are, or that even the best-run company is doomed to make a loss because fares are set too low.
A lot of people in Harare, probably a majority of those over 25, have a fairly good idea of what such a service can look like.
Until a couple of decades ago most people in the city went to work and school and back home again on buses owned by a single company operating a scheduled service.
Set up as a municipal-owned company in the 1930s, it was taken over by a foreign investor, known as Salisbury United Omnibus Company for years, then Harare United Omnibus Company before being merged into its sister company Zupco on nationalisation.
Zupco collapsed as an efficient urban transport company, largely because fares were set far below what was required to maintain a fleet and follow a proper replacement schedule for buses, let alone expanding the fleet to cope with the huge post-independence surge in population.
Pirate taxis had to be legalised and these were replaced by kombis later.
Fares are higher than they would be in a well-run monopoly, simply because the costs of moving a person is lower in a large bus than a small vehicle.
HUOC had its faults, but compared to what now exists most of us seem to remember it with a golden glow.
So there will be a lot of support for a return to the sort of service that HUOC once provided.
What worries us is that there is already talk of subsidies from central Government, as if the Treasury is ever going to have enough money to throw away on urban people, and that the council is talking over specific schemes instead of seeking tenders, or at least seeking information from similar sized cities on what fare formulas could look like.
We believe the fare formula has to be brought to the centre of the debate, and only once an agreed formula has generated specific fares for specific routes, can the people of the city even start to think about whether to approve such a scheme.
If fares, as we suspect they will be, are less than those now charged by the kombis then approval will be automatic.
If greater then a lot more debate is needed on benefits.
One cost can be left out of the equations, the cost to the city of providing terminuses and bus stops. These costs will be far less than upgrading highways for ever more kombis and private cars, needed if Harare does not get a proper public transport service.
In any case there is a strong argument that such facilities can be paid out of parking revenues generated from those who take the alternative of private transport.
Harare does need a public transport system, but there is a lot of spade work to be done and probably a far more formal process to set requirements, to seek proposals and to adjudicate and cost these proposals, for both the city and the many who will use them, before we implement such a scheme.