So I noticed on the news today that Cape Town has launched it’s Integrated Rapid Transport service, having been called the IRT for a while. Anyone living in Cape Town knows all about the chaos on the roads as extra bus lanes have been added to the major routes in and out of the city.
For all it’s beauty and wonders this city is very poorly laid out. The road system looks like God dropped his bowl of spaghetti and there were it fell we laid roads. Public Transport is non-existent. From Table View (a suburb of over 300000 people) there is no train system into the city and the road that leads to town ends up in a single-lane. This means that Rush Hour in Cape Town is actually Rush-3-Hours. If you don’t leave home by 6am you won’t get to town before 8:30.
So we get this new road system, which they have called it MyCiTi and the first few buses were launched today, hopefully bringing the airport-city route online before the world cup. Nice.
But I have a problem with the name. I don’t think it was researched properly. Simple check: www.myciti.co.za will lead you to the Citi Bank Group website. While Citi Bank is hardly recognised in SA, I do think the City of Cape Town should have done a little bit of online research when choosing the name.
Why not just call it “IRT”? We’re all calling it that already. Argh. Politicians. The slogan is also a little silly. I have no idea what the Xhosa Phrase means, but “Laat Wiel” and “Going Places” – while both have something to do with transport, don’t seem much to do with each other.
Here’s a clip I found on Zoopy I thought you’d like to watch.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy the IRT is finally coming to Cape Town – we need decent transport. But what does concern me is the lack of thought when choosing a name … which brings me to my freetip for this Friday afternoon:
FreeTip: Do some research online when choosing a name. 
Popularity: 18% [?]
