Ready for the Ride Revolution

The Ridelink initiative, launching at the University of Cape Town in September, is set to give South African commuters a new way to look at the way they travel. The programme allows participants to link up using an online database, choosing their lifts from a list of UCT-affiliated members, whether students, lecturers, or other staff, in their own area. In this way, students have a safe platform from which to organise transport that minimises their spending and impact on the environment.

First introduced in 2007, with limited success, Ridelink has undergone an extensive streamlining process. This, coupled with support from UCT, means that August and September will see Ridelink launched with a new website, a new lift club-only parking lot, and most importantly, new members. The university has long been troubled by a severe lack of parking space, and earlier this year the UCT SRC’s Michell Mpike told the University’s Varsity newspaper that the University should support the initiative, emphasising its practicality.

In the long term, a system like Ridelink could be adopted by commuters all over the country. The fact that everyone using the Ridelink database will have the UCT campus as their destination makes organisation particularly simple, but a system of submitting and answering requests online could be adapted to serve a larger group travelling to various places. While the programme was initially conceived to minimise the environmental damage caused by having an unnecessary amount of traffic on roads, organiser Kimon de Greef, of UCT’s Green Campus Initiative (GCI), sees Ridelink also being a way for students to save money. In the long run, he and the rest of those involved have high hopes of providing an example of what could be done on a larger scale around the country to reduce traffic congestion, pollution, and the amount of money spent on transport costs. UCT could be at the forefront of a massive change in the way that South Africans travel – what remains to be done is to get commuters on board.

UCT students can sign up to Ridelink by finding it under “joinable sites” on Vula or by visiting the site at //www.ridelink.i8.com/. You can also find out more by joining Ridelink’s Facebook group.