'Walking all the way': 10 million SA pupils still walk to school

Ten million — or almost 60% — of  SA’s pupils rely on their feet to get to school every day.

This was one of the key findings of the 2020 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which showed that “walking all the way” remained the most used mode of travel for pupils to reach their educational institution in all nine provinces.

While many students walk to school “because it is nearby or close enough to walk from home”, 11% said they could not afford public transport, the survey said.

This was especially prevalent in rural areas, said statistician-general Risenga Maluleke at a media briefing on Thursday.

“Your rural provinces — Limpopo, KZN, North West, Mpumalanga — do show a higher proportion of those who walk to school,” he said.

About a quarter of pupils in Limpopo (24.3%) started travelling before 6.30am followed by KwaZulu-Natal (18.6%).

At 20.3%, KwaZulu-Natal had the highest percentage of pupils walking to their educational institution, followed by Gauteng at 17.7% and 14.6% in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.

Public transport consultant Paul Browning noted that the transport department's 2015 national learner transport policy contained recommendations to resolve the transport issues faced by pupils.

“If you just read the foreword by the minister, you will see that there were high hopes of greatly reducing the need for learners to walk to school,” said Browning.

“What happened?”

The survey found that the number of South Africans who had travelled during the seven days before the survey interview rose from 42.4 million in 2013 to 45 million in 2020.

The increase seemed to be in line with the increase in population over that period, said Browning.

Nationally, travelling for education purposes (36.8%) was the main reason for taking a trip.

The national transport department survey had previously been carried out in 2003 and 2013.

The survey counts one-way trips made by people from their homes to destinations, with some 76% of people making trips in the seven days before the survey interviews took place.

Data collection for the 2020 survey took place between January and March 2020, said Maluleke, though fieldwork had stopped in late March in the wake of Covid-19.

About 2,444 out of a total of 65,000 respondents could not be reached as a result, he said.

About 17.4 million South Africans walked all the way to their various destinations, followed by 10.7 million people who used taxis and 6.2 million who used cars or trucks as transport.

Trains were the least-used mode of travel by household members, the survey showed, except for the Western Cape (1.6%) and Gauteng (1.5%). Both provinces had extensive commuter rail networks compared to other provinces, however.

The biggest reason for taking day trips was to visit friends or family or ancestral homes (43.2%) shopping (15%) and finally leisure (11%). Some 60.2% of overnight trips were for visiting friends and family or ancestral homes followed by 15.4% for leisure and 8.5% to attend funerals.

The survey showed that overall use of public transport had risen since the survey was last carried out in 2013.

“There was a general increase of households who used a taxi during the reporting period (from 9.8 million in 2013 to 11.4 million in 2020),” it said.

The increase in taxi use was likely because more taxis were available now compared to 2013, said Browning. “However, it is argued by government that the industry is ‘overtraded’," he said.

“So while this makes for a frequent service, it does not allow every taxi to make a profit. One result is often violence between competing operators or associations, as described in the recent report of the Gauteng Commission on Taxi Violence.”

Almost 57% of respondents said they were unhappy about taxi fares and facilities at taxi ranks.

The number of people using public transport to get to work had also declined from 5.4 million in 2013 to 4.7 million in 2020 as more workers — some 43.5% in 2020 — switched to using private transport.

About 35% or workers used public transport while 20.3% walked all the way.

Taxis accounted for 80.2% of daily trips for workers — up from 67.6% in 2013 — followed by buses (16.6%) which was down from 19.5%. 

Workers’ trips by train dropped heavily from 12.9% in 2013 to 3.2% in 2020.

“In 2013, reasons most likely to be indicated for dissatisfaction with train services were crowding on the train (78.2%), followed by security on the walk to/from the train station (56.6%). In 2020, the level of crowding in the trains (86.8%) and waiting time for trains (86.6%) were the biggest problems mentioned by households,” the survey said.

Maluleke noted that “a large chunk” of people were walking to their destinations.

“It’s caused by limitations, be they financial or a lack of transport, especially for learners who said there’s no availability,” he said. “About 40% of the country is being kept healthy by walking — even if it’s not what they would prefer to do.”

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