Pretoria – According to the 20 Year Review: South Africa 1994 to 2014, providing effective public transport systems may be the single most important intervention in supporting environmental, economic and social sustainability.
The report, released by President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria on Tuesday, says transport is a major component of the budget of households while the transport sector globally is the second largest contributor to Greenhouse Gas.
According to the South Africa’s National Household Income and Expenditure Survey as quoted in the 20 Year Review, households in large cities spent around 20% of their income on transport, reducing marginally to 17% in 2010/11.
South African cities such as Johannesburg face two major related challenges in terms of transport.
The first is that the middle-class is overwhelming private-car oriented and, because of this, levels of congestion and environmental impacts of public transport are growing.
Studies suggest that Johannesburg has amongst the highest road congestion in the world. The IBM Global Commuter Pain Survey, for example, rated Johannesburg as the 5th most congested of the 20 large cities it surveyed.
Over the review period, the dominant trends in transportation were the continued rise of the private motor car and the continued rise of the mini-bus taxi as a dominant mode of transport for households without a car.
In 2011, 30% of households owned a motor car, but this varies widely across space with less than 10% in many rural areas and 46% in Cape Town, followed by 44% in Tshwane and 38% in Johannesburg. Again, however, there is huge variation between population groups.
Across South Africa, 19% of black households have a motor car, compared with 91% of white households, 73% of Indian households, and 38% of coloured households.
For black households especially, the performance of the public transport system is critically important, but to reduce congestion, and to deal with environmental damage, it is also necessary to shift white and other middle class riders onto public transport.
“Towards the end of the review period there was a shift in the dominant patterns with a new wave of investment in public transport, although it may take time for ridership patterns to respond significantly. One of the positive effects of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was the urgency it gave to providing new systems of public transport,” notes the review.
In Gauteng, a rapid rail system - the Gautrain - was built connecting OR Tambo International Airport to the major business nodes in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with its dedicated lanes for frequent-service high quality busses, is being developed in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Cape Town and Rustenburg, with BRT also in planning stage in Mangaung and eThekwini.
There are ambitious plans for extensive BRT networks, but these are being developed in phases and, to date, construction has been slower than anticipated but is continuing.
The main modes of public passenger transport in South Africa are minibus-taxis (64%), buses (21%) and rail (15%).
In the secondary cities car ownership is still relatively low – 25% in Rustenburg, 27% in Polokwane and 28% in Mbombela.
The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) is investing heavily in the upgrade of passenger rail systems after decades of neglect, with new signalling systems and rolling stock.
The Review however says there have been tensions surrounding some of these developments.
“Segments of the mini-bus taxi industry, for example, have challenged the introduction of BRT. In Johannesburg this result in a transport strike and periodic violence but the BRT was eventually implemented but in Nelson Mandela Bay opposition to the BRT led to construction being postponed.
“The relationship between the taxi industry and new forms of public transport needs to be carefully addressed in the future,” reads the Review.
The mini-bus taxi industry remains a major mode of collective transport across South Africa, and is well adapted to the complex structure of South Africa’s cities, and so does need to be properly integrated into the emergent new multi-modal transport system.
The Review also notes a tense matter is the massive investment in freeway upgrades at the same time that attempts are being made to resuscitate public transportation.
“The user-pay financing model for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Scheme has provoked huge public controversy but more important into the future is how to align investment in transport systems against the overall objective of improving public transportation,” says the Review.
It says there is a close relationship between shifting forms of transportation and the spatial development of cities.
The massive expansion of the freeway system in South African cities from the late 1960s to the 1980s led to lateral expansion and de-densification.
Looking towards the future
Today, the emergence of new forms of public transport offers the prospect of restructuring city form around Transit Oriented Development (TOD).
To date, there has been strong investment interest in the Gautrain precincts, but it is not clear yet what impact BRT systems are having on investment decisions in the property market, and whether the new investment in rail will realise opportunities for TOD that have been missed in the past, reads the Review.
“One of the other tough challenges still to be addressed – which impacts directly on spatial form - is the subsidised commuter bus system. While this system reduces that cost of travel in a highly fragmented urban system, it also maintains ultimately unsustainable land use and settlement patterns,” it notes. -SAnews.gov.za
