The City’s Urban Mobility Directorate kicked off Transport Month with a panel discussion around Cape Town’s congestion conundrum at the Concourse in the Civic Centre on Tuesday, 1 October 2024. Participants highlighted the need for an integrated public transport system with an efficient passenger rail service as the backbone, supported by other modes of transport and development in lower income areas to improve access to opportunities.
The City’s updated Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP) for 2024 confirms a worrying 89% of commuter trips in Cape Town are road-based, which is unsustainable and unaffordable to both the City administration and residents.
However, expanding road capacity is extremely expensive and time consuming, and only provides short-term relief as evidence shows that the new roads and lanes are only attracting more private vehicles onto the road network.
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility, Councillor Rob Quintas, and Mr Raymond Maseko, Regional Manager of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa; Gordon Laing, an advocate for sustainable mobility; Nicky Sasman and Marli Swart, both City transport planners; and Sarah Chow, Chief Engineer of Road Traffic Design from the Western Cape Government, participated in the discussion facilitated by Niel Slingers, the City’s Director: Transport Planning and Network Management.
‘The challenge is getting people onto public transport. This is our first strategy in combatting congestion. We need people on buses where the MyCiTi bus service operates with passenger rail as the backbone of public transport, as is the case elsewhere in the world.
‘The City is currently busy with the roll-out of the largest public transport infrastructure project in South Africa. In fact, the implementation of the second phase of the MyCiTi bus service to connect communities from the metro-south east with Wynberg and Claremont is the biggest life changing investment in public transport since the implementation of passenger rail many decades ago. It is a mammoth project and we are tackling it incrementally. Thus, the City is doing its part in keeping Capetonians moving,’ said Councillor Quintas.
The concept of ‘induced demand’ insofar as it relates to new road infrastructure provision to alleviate traffic congestion was also discussed.
Induced demand means that efforts to increase capacity by building new road infrastructure is only a short-term solution, given that the new lanes only attract more single occupancy vehicles to the road network until the new roads are once again filled to capacity. As such, the City is exploring the implementation of new lanes and infrastructure that are reserved for the use of public transport vehicles only.
‘This will bring a greater return on the high costs of expanding road capacity, is aligned with the City’s objective of prioritising public transport and will facilitate a modal shift from private vehicles to public transport services over time,’ said Councillor Quintas.
He confirmed that ‘congestion tax’ is not a consideration at the moment.
‘We can only charge congestion tax when public transport is at its optimum. Until such time as a fully integrated and comprehensive public transport system is in place, it will not be fair to penalise single occupancy vehicles,’ said Councillor Quintas.
While efforts are under way in restoring the passenger rail service in Cape Town, the City’s Municipal Spatial Development Framework outlines how the City intends to transform Cape Town’s spatial form with public-led investment within an Urban Inner Core and by pursuing transit-oriented development (TOD).
TOD is a strategy aimed at bringing people closer to work opportunities, and to encourage economic development along transit corridors, such as railway tracks and stations, as well as public transport interchanges, minibus-taxi ranks and MyCiTi trunk routes and stations to improve access to jobs and services.
‘Thus, we need to see development happening closer to communities where resources and opportunities are few. In the end, it is about keeping people and goods moving while bringing down the cost and time of commuting,’ said Councillor Quintas.
- Another panel discussion will be hosted tomorrow, Wednesday 2 October 2024, at the Concourse Level at the Civic Centre. The topic is ‘Innovation in Transport Construction’ with City engineers and experts elaborating on the latest technologies and interventions in urban mobility. All media are welcome to attend. The discussion will start at 10:30.
