Siyonzana made the announcement during his inauguration at the Ramblers Club in Bloemfontein on Friday 27 August. Whilst the announcement elicited a round of applause from those in attendance, the exact details of this latest phase are unknown. Siyonzana himself says details on this development will follow in due course. He did, however, acknowledge that residents of Mangaung have been promised a modern and functioning transport system for years and that the time of waiting is over.

The construction phase of the IPTN project has been marred by a series of protest actions and boycotts beginning in 2019 which has led to delays. 

In one such protest in March 2021, construction workers brought traffic on the Fort Hare Road in Bloemfontein to a grinding halt over unpaid salaries. They alleged at the time that the construction company they were working for had not paid salaries in full because work had been halted due to the contentious relationship between the local business forum and Mangaung over the awarding of tenders. Not too long after that, disgruntled business owners forming part of a forum in the city began storming the Mangaung headquarters in the Bram Fischer Building, demanding answers as to why IPTN tenders were being awarded to outsiders and not those within the province. 

The metro went on to appoint private security to ensure protesters would not enter said building and intimidate employees. This forum would later fall into the Mangaung Concerned Community, who organised the Mangaung shutdown in May.

Another part of the IPTN project is the R400 million Bloemfontein taxi rank, which has been standing vacant for a decade. In 2019, the municipality signed a 30-year lease agreement with the Greater Bloemfontein Taxi Association through its entity, the Free State Taxi Association, to manage the facility. The first matter on the list was renovating the building. To date this has not been done. The aforementioned issues were not addressed by Siyonzana during his inauguration speech.

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