Civil Engineering September 2022 | Vol 30 No 8

24 September 2022 Civil Engineering I undertook vacation work at the CSIR during July 2022 under the guidance of Dr Mathetha Mokonyama. For me to understand part of the scope of research work the CSIR undertakes, I was asked to carry out ethnographic research entailing being a job seeker who is completely reliant on public transport, embarking on a journey to attend a job interview. I was asked to plan and undertake a journey from the CSIR student accom- modation in Brummeria, Pretoria, to Springs Mall in Ekurhuleni (about 85 km away), for arrival at 09:00 on a Tuesday, and record my experience in detail for subsequent analysis. I pre-planned my trip using Google Maps, which indicated that the trip would take about 1 hour and 10 minutes, making use of minibus taxis. I therefore set my departure time to 6:30, with an expected arrival time of 8:00. THE JOURNEY My journey started at exactly 06:30. I had to wait for about 15 minutes for a minibus taxi to arrive near the CSIR Campus, en route to Pretoria central. I paid R20 for the trip. Upon arrival at Pretoria central, I was transferred to another minibus taxi, and had to wait for about 15 minutes for the taxi to fill up to its passenger capacity. I paid R15. Thereafter, the taxi proceeded to Bosman taxi rank, which is a major regional public transport hub. I arrived at the Bosman taxi rank at 07:30 and got onto my next minibus taxi to Springs. I had to wait for 45 minutes for the minibus taxi to fill up. I paid R65. I arrived at the Springs Station taxi rank at exactly 09:20, where I proceeded to another minibus taxi to Springs Mall, waiting a further 20 minutes for that taxi to be full. I paid R17. I arrived at Springs Mall at exactly 10:00, two hours later than I had planned, and an hour late for my “interview”. The total amount of time to travel to Springs Mall was approximately 3 hours 30 min- utes, costing a total of R117. The return Mary Chirwa Third year civil engineering student University of the Witwatersrand marykasambala90@gmail.com I was an hour late for my job interview “I was late for my job interview” – a dreaded phrase, yet a daily lived experience for the millions of job seekers in South Africa. I recently had a first-hand experience of how it feels to be an hour late for a job interview. I explain how and why this happened, and what this means for fixing our urban transport system. Figure 1 Relationship between distance and minibus taxi fares Rand per kilometre 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Distance (km) 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 y = 9.2304x –0.609 R 2 = 0.9707 Rand/km Power (rand/km)