Service so reliable you didn’t need a car
|Published
Durban - The old picture today is from a post by historian Gerald Buttigieg on the website Facts About Durban. It takes in the Alice Street Bus Terminus, today known as Johannes Nkosi Street.
He notes the building housed the administration as well as sheds and maintenance for a bus service second to none.
At the end of each day, the buses would return to Alice Street and the destination indicator up front would read DEPOT.
Buttigieg writes: “When I arrived in Durban in 1948, the trams had been taken off but the trolley buses were still going. I have this vague recollection of my father taking my sister and I for a bus ride soon after arriving in Durban along Marine Parade.
“Thereafter, I grew up with the trolley buses. My parents never had a car, so we relied heavily on the Durban Corporation bus service. It actually was so good that my sister never learnt how to drive a car yet she managed to raise her family using the bus service.
“Looking back, it was an excellent bus service. Even for the far-flung suburbs.
“On a personal note I used one every day getting to school and back, on Saturdays the inevitable trip to town to join my friends, going to the movies with a date before I was eligible to drive. And they even laid on a late night Saturday service to get moviegoers home. Unfortunately, if you accompanied your date home after Saturday night movies, your return trip was more likely on shank’s pony or thumbing a lift.
“It really was a sad day when they pulled the trolley bus service, followed eventually by the motor buses. Today, it is only a vague memory or what it used to be.”
He gives key dates in Durban’s transport history:
- 1860 First operating steam engine railway service in South Africa, Durban to Point railway.
- 1870s Privately owned horse-drawn omnibus operated between Grey Street and the Point.
- 1881 HR Collins introduces horse drawn tramway service from Russell Street to the Point.
- 1892 Sir Marshall Campbell introduces rickshaw transportation.
- 1899 Durban Corporation acquires the assets of Durban Borough Tramways to initiate a municipal transport service.
- 1902 Durban Corporation introduces electric tram route, the first being from the city centre to the Point.
- 1925 Durban Motor bus services introduced.
- 1935 Durban Corporation introduces electric Trolley Bus services.
- 1949 Electric tram service terminated.
- 1968 Durban Trolley Bus service ended.
- 2003 Durban Corporation Bus Service, now known as Durban Transport, was sold to a private consortium for R70 million.
Today the depot is used as a key part of the city’s bus service, while little has changed on the building, as Shelley Kjonstad’s picture shows.
The Independent on Saturday