Cape Town was the third most congested city in Africa in 2025, ahead of Johannesburg, which sits at number six, and Cairo at 12th place.

This is an improvement from being the second-most congested city on the continent in 2023.

Cape Town has an extensive rail network in Metrorail, but mismanagement and corruption of its management agency, the Passenger Rail Agency South Africa saw passenger numbers drop from a high of about 600,000 per day in 2003, making up more than a fifth of all commuter trips, to a low of about 133,000 passengers a day in 2022, down to one out of every 50 daily commuters.

Statistics provided by the City of Cape Town show that the increasing failure of Metrorail services, which reached a low in 2019 and was exacerbated by the covid lockdown, led to increasing use of private cars and minibus-taxis. As Metrorail services have slowly improved, passenger numbers have started recovering, reaching about 200,000 per day by March 2026. This slight recovery is reflected in a proportionate decrease in private car and minibus-taxi use.

Read the full GroundUp article here.