The Common Sense recently conducted a deep-dive analysis into how South Africans commute to work. One of the clearest findings was the dramatic reshaping of public transport, particularly the collapse of the country’s rail system. The scale of this decline is so significant that it warrants examination on its own.

South Africa has three major categories of public transport that workers use to get to their jobs: taxis, buses, and trains. The chart below shows the number of South Africans using each form of public transport to travel to work. Taxis are shown at the bottom of each bar, layered by buses and trains on top.

The number of workers commuting by taxi to work increased from 3.1 million in 2009 to 4.6 million in 2025. Over the same period, bus commuting declined from roughly 789 000 people to 581 000. Train commuting collapsed from around 542 000 people to just 118 000.

Although taxis are classified as public transport, they are overwhelmingly privately operated businesses providing transport to the public. As South Africa’s rail system deteriorated and bus commuting declined, the taxi industry expanded to fill the gap. In doing so, it has secured near-complete dominance in the public transport arena.

The collapse of rail becomes even more apparent when each transport category is indexed to 100 in 2009. This removes the large differences in the original size of each category and allows the rate of growth or decline to be compared directly. A category reaching 150 means that 50.0% more people use that mode than in 2009, while a category falling to 50 means usage has halved.

Taxi use has grown by 50.1% since 2009, while bus use has declined by 26.4%. Rail has suffered a near-total collapse. South Africa’s trains are now used by 78.2% fewer commuters than they were 16 years ago.

There was some intent behind the declines in the bus and train industries. Both posed a threat to the dominance of the taxi industry. Attacks on commuter buses have been well documented over the past decade and the bus industry has expressed frustration that almost nothing gets done about this. Neglect by politicians of commuter rail infrastructure and case studies such as the resistance to letting the Democratic Alliance government in the Western Cape take over rail infrastructure there has some of its origins in corruption aimed at deepening the hold of the taxi industry over the South African commuter market.

The taxi industry has therefore been at the forefront of the bigger enclavisation trend that this newspaper has written so much about. South Africa’s rail collapse is an example of that same broader pattern in which private capacity increasingly compensates for declining state capacity. In this case, the taxi industry has expanded into the vacuum left by failing state transport.