Steve Hayes
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| The Last Tram ceremony, 18 March 1961 |
The Johannesburg Transport Department was a new name for what had previously been known as Johannesburg Municipal Tramways, which began in 1906 when the first electric trams were introduced, replacing the old horse-drawn trams which had been run by a private company. But the trams were being phased out, so they decided to change the name, but members of the running staff still referred to it as the JMT, and the letters JMT still appeared on the sides of some buses until they were repainted.
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| Steve Hayes |
Fifty years ago today, on Wednesday 8 March 1961, I joined the Johannesburg Transport Department as a learner bus conductor.
There were six of us in the class, which met in the training school at the trolley bus garage in Fordsburg, and it started off with the instructor, Mr Venter, showing us how to make out cash and journey waybills, and in the afternoon we learned how to punch tickets, only he would not let me do it left-handed. But eventually he relented when he say I could punch tickets much faster that way. We had bundles of loose tickets, which we held together with knicker elastic (broekrek), and a bell punch which punched a hole to indicate the stage where the passenger boarded. And the auditors could count all the punched bits to check against the number of tickets sold on the waybill.
The starting wage for a driver or conductor was 59c per hour, or R25.96 per week for a 44 hour week. It was a 6-day week of an average of 7 hours 20 minutes per day. Fares had been simplified with the introduction of decimal currency the previous month: 5c for 1 stage, 7.5c for 3-5 stages, and 10c for 6 stages and over. There were also higher fares for longer journeys, but they were undertaken only by one-man operated single-deckers going to Randburg. The simplification meant that old coins or new could be used for the bus fare, 6d or 5c. A cup of tea or coffee in a local cafe cost 5c, and an omelet and chips cost 35c.
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