Qonce Taxi Rank
What actually happens
Taxis leave when they are full, not on a timetable. Marshals keep the queues in their heads.
Why people doubt it
To predict a queue, someone has to keep count, and a record of which taxis leave on which route looks like someone watching: the police, or a rival association. Taxi owners belong to associations, and associations fight over routes, sometimes violently.
Where it could stick
A small app for the marshals. The marshal taps a route each time its taxi pulls out; from those times the app works out how fast each queue fills. It sends the answer as a voice note in isiXhosa: “The eMonti taxi leaves in about seven minutes.” It runs on the marshals’ own phones, and the counting needs no data.
From the classroom
Maths, Grade 8: rate and time. If three people join the eMonti queue every two minutes, how long until 15 seats are full? The marshals’ app does only that sum, over and over.
Imagine
What if the queue spoke your language, and answered to the marshal instead of a server?