Several pickup points were moved from this area to the Fourth Street terminus over the next few days. The Mbare kombis pickup point had earlier been moved to Market Square – but some enterprising drivers had continued making flying stops at Copacabana; after this incident there was fresh pressure that cleared them out of Copacabana, most transferring to Fourth Street. A few days after this operation started, the pickup point for Mount Pleasant was moved from the corner of Chinhoyi Street and Nelson Mandela Avenue. With these and others added to the congestion at Fourth Street, chaos resulted. Passengers didn’t know where to catch their kombis, so the Fourth Street terminus was crowded with half-full kombis waiting to fill up. There were so many that a jam was created and filled kombis could hardly move out.
Whether the pressure at Copacabana over the previous weeks was caused by police or ‘illegal touts’, many drivers had been avoiding the official pickup points, putting passengers down as near to them as they could before the cops caught up with them. Mbare Kombis dropped passengers as far away as Mazorodze Road and most did so at the junction of Cameron Street and Mugabe Road. Many changed their route, taking Mazorodze Road and turning off at the flyover to go via Mupedzanhamo.
After the Easter blitz, ripple effects were observed on many routes. Kombis to town from Waterfalls were too full to pick up passengers in Ardbennie, leaving those who wanted to come to town from there to walk to the Mazorodze Road/Willowvale Road junction (a place their kombis had been avoiding for weeks due to heavy police presence) or into Mbare.
It all carries the usual marks of panic, unplanned action by the police, though some put the blame on the city council.
Post published in: News
The solution is simple . Kombis driving into town in the morning peak-hour should be allowed to drop passengers off at their original pick-up points and quickly leave the rank to go & pick-up some more passengers coming into town from the surbubs. Only a few kombis already in the front of the queue would have the luxury of loading the trickling passengers, if they want to. What the Police is doing is wrong because once the kombis drive into the ranks in town to drop-off passengers in the morning, the Police are preventing the kombis that want to quickly rush back to the suburbs from leaving the ranks saying they should form long , winding queues. For what? Normally ,during peak hour, kombis drop passengers off & quickly leave the rank empty & rush back to pick-up some more passengers from the suburbs & the Police are discouraging this. The result is that a kombi that drives into the rank during morning peak-hour fails to return to the suburbs even if it has no intentions of loading hence kombis keep piling up, clogging the ranks & hence increasing fares because they may take up to 4 or 5 hours to leave the rank & end up making only 1 trip for every 8 trips they used to make.
Likewise, during the evening peak-hour, kombis that would have been gridlocked for hours without leaving the rank are increasing fares to make up for lost business whilst stuck in the rank. However , they are kombis that would be coming in from the surburbs to pick up passengers in the evening peak hour & charging the normal correct fare. These kombis are finding the ranks already clogged up by kombis that had spent the whole day in idle queues, so they have no option but to pick-up passengers from undesignated areas since stranded commuters are finding them a welcome relief from the extortion going on.
For example,I do not know why the Inez Terrez Charge Office –one way kombi exit in front of Central Police station was closed. This could be used by kombis that want to quickly leave the rank & rush back to the suburbs without loading during the morning peak-hour. The Police have instead taken the whole area adjacent to Central Police station that housed kombi ranks & turned it into a flea-market parking zone for Police –owned pirate taxis: Toyota Spacios , Ipsums etc that would be ferrying stuff for flea-market stall owners at Central Police station flea market , to & fro Roadport & to & from their homes.