{"id":89775,"date":"2024-11-25T08:03:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T08:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=89775"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:38:23","slug":"89775","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/11\/25\/89775\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting travel habits: Gauteng residents are spending more"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

People in Gauteng are spending much more on transport than they did in 2017, according to a province-wide survey by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey shows that in 2017 12% of residents spent between R1,000 and R2,000 a month on transport. Six years later, that increased to 17% of residents. In 2017 only 4% spent more than R2,000 a month, but that jumped to 13% by 2023. That means nearly one in three residents were spending more than R1,000 a month on transport last year. Even taking into account inflation and the increasing cost of living in general this is still pretty steep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 2023\/4 GCRO survey, which collected data from more than 13,700 residents across Gauteng, gives insight into the monthly transport spending of individuals as well as the mode of transport used for the \u2018longest part of their most frequent trip\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents in South Africa\u2019s most populous province are spending between R0 and R9,500 a month on transport, with a median spend of R500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 27% of Gautengers who said they primarily drove cars spent vastly different amounts monthly, but the median for car drivers sits at R2,000 a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty-eight percent of the Gautengers surveyed used minibus taxis as their primary means of transport, and the median spend of these taxis users was R350 a month. This is less than the median monthly spending of the bus and train users. Very few participants rely on buses and trains in the latest survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How things have changed in the past decade<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Buses and trains were the main transport mode for less than 2% of the surveyed population in 2023\/4. Ten years ago, the survey found that 7% used them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minibus transport use has also decreased in the past decade: 45% of respondents relied on these in 2013\/14 and in the latest survey 38% did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what are people doing instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driving and walking. Despite being one of the most expensive transport options, the proportion of people driving a private car has increased from 17% to 27% in the past 10 years. On the opposite side of the cost spectrum, the proportion of people who said walking was their primary means of getting around increased to 22% from 14% in 2013\/14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transport money<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Socioeconomic status is measured in the GCRO survey on a 1-to-10 scale based on factors including household income, employment status, education levels, medical aid and internet access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transport modes differ from poor to rich, but the higher the socioeconomic bracket, the bigger the percentage of private car users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in the lower class brackets, many people still opt for private cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Preference for cars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cars are the main mode of transport (either as drivers or passengers) for more than 70% of the respondents in professions generally associated with higher incomes, such as managers and professionals. It is only in the job seekers and \u2018elementary occupations\u2019 categories, which includes gardeners, general workers and cleaners, where less than a quarter of respondents drive in private cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Men in cars, women in taxis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A closer look at the surveyed population reveals a significant gender disparity among those who use taxis or cars: 42% of women use minibus taxis as their main mode of transport, almost 10% more than men. Conversely, 32% of men drive cars as their main mode of transport, which is 10% more than women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women are more often passengers in private cars than men. Passengers include people getting a ride from someone they know, or paying for a ride in a private car, but not those e-hailing or using meter taxis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a notable shift in the past six years. The 2017\/18 survey showed that 51% of women relied on minibus taxis, while only 16% drove cars. There has also been an increase in men driving cars \u2013 only 27% were driving in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flagging e-hailing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite Bolt and Uber bringing massive changes to the transport landscape in South Africa\u2019s cities, the 2023\/24 survey data shows not that many Gautengers are e-hailing. Two-thirds of the surveyed population never use e-hailing services. For those who do, most only use them a couple of times a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of regular e-hailing taxi users surveyed are primarily minibus taxi users, who likely take Ubers during the hours minibus taxis aren\u2019t available. More women than men e-hail, and the majority of e-hailing taxi users are in the lower and middle social class brackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Notebook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Data for this newsletter is from Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO)\u2019s Quality of Life (QoL) surveys from 2013\/14, 2017\/18 and 2023\/14. We omitted the 2020\/21 survey because the transport data was affected by Covid when people were not moving around in usual ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GCRO\u2019s Quality of Life Survey interviews adults across Gauteng. They\u2019ve been conducting these surveys since 2009, and 2023\/14 was the seventh round of surveys. The Quality of Life surveys include a vast number of questions (a 20-page questionnaire!) with valid data from more than 13,700 participants in 2023 and more than 24,800 in 2013 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this newsletter we used the unweighted version of the data \u2013 that is data representing the actual answers from the individual participants themselves. A weighted analysis would have changed some of our numbers slightly, such as changing the gender gap data from 42% female and 33% male minibus users to 45% female and 37% male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our decision to use median to measure the \u2018averages\u2019 in the data was because of the extreme outliers, especially regarding spending. In transport spending, a number of outliers went well beyond R2,500. This skewed the mean and so we used the median to get a more accurate sense of the typical Gautenger\u2019s transport spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to the team at the GCRO for being so generous with their time and data to helps us put together this piece. You can find the full survey results and analysis here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: The ‘How Gautengers Get Around’ chart was updated on 25 November 2024 to reflect the correct spend of the richest class from R1,200 a month to R2,000 a month.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People in Gauteng are spending much more on transport than they did in 2017, according to a province-wide survey by the\u00a0Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":89789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1319,1320,1387],"tags":[1289,909,1288,47,1293,1292,1291,1286,868,1287,498,1290],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-89775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsletter","category-premium","category-the-outlier","tag-bolt","tag-cars","tag-e-haiing","tag-gauteng","tag-gauteng-city-region-observatory","tag-gcro","tag-minibus-taxis","tag-mode-of-transport","tag-public-transport","tag-taxis","tag-transport","tag-uber"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":{"ID":89780,"id":89780,"title":"transport-circle-new2","filename":"transport-circle-new2.png","filesize":63422,"url":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2.png","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/11\/25\/89775\/transport-circle-new2\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"Most Gauteng residents fall in the lower socioeconomic class brackets and rely mostly on minibus taxis to get around. However, many say they opt for private cars when they can \u2013 either as drivers or passengers, according to the data from the Gauteng-City Region Observatory.\nThe GCRO\u2019s 2023\/24 Quality of Life survey shows that despite private cars being one of the most expensive options, the proportion of people driving has increased from 17% to 27% in the past 10 years.\nThe survey measures socioeconomic class on a one-to-10 scale based on factors such as household income, employment, education, medical aid membership and internet access. In general, the ratio of cars to other modes of transport increases with each wealth bracket: the higher the class, the more people use cars.\nThe survey also collects monthly transport spend from each respondent. The poorest spend as little as R200 a month on transport, while the wealthiest spend R2,000.","name":"transport-circle-new2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":89775,"date":"2024-11-25 07:55:49","modified":"2025-09-01 05:12:05","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1080,"height":1080,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2-1024x1024.png","large-width":1024,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2.png","1536x1536-width":1080,"1536x1536-height":1080,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/transport-circle-new2.png","2048x2048-width":1080,"2048x2048-height":1080}},"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"Yes","post_style":"ch","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89775"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90021,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89775\/revisions\/90021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89775"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=89775"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=89775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}