South Africa: Cape Town's Visually Impaired Community Faces Reduced Mobility Over Dial-a-Ride Downscaling

4 December 2025
Daily Maverick (Johannesburg)
By Kiara Wales

The future of Dial-a-Ride - the City of Cape Town's public transport service for people with disabilities - is uncertain pending a legal review challenging the City's announcement of plans to narrow its mandate and eligible user base.

National Disability Rights Awareness Month in South Africa ran from 3 November to 3 December. However, visually impaired Cape Town residents Sergil January and Benjamin Pedro never felt less visible.

Both January and Pedro are employed at the Cape Town Society for the Blind (CTSB), as an awareness officer and an orientation and mobility specialist, respectively. They have both been Dial-a-Ride users since 2022, after being on the waiting list for 16 years, said Pedro.

Pedro uses the service regularly to commute from his home in Athlone to work in Salt River, and then to Eerste River, where he spends his weekends.

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January uses Dial-a-Ride for his commute from Retreat to Salt River and back, and to visit his son in Athlone.

However, the future of this service now hangs in the balance.

Proposed downscaling

In a statement on 7 August 2025, the City of Cape Town announced that Dial-a-Ride would return to its "original mandate" of serving "those with the most critical transport needs", owing to budgetary constraints.

Established about 30 years ago and operating under the umbrellas of MyCiTi and logistics company HG Travelling Services, Dial-a-Ride's original mandate is as a "dedicated kerb-to-kerb service for people with disabilities...

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