Cape Town: The Urban Mobility Directorate of City of Cape Town kicked off the Transport Month by organising a panel discussion around congestion conundrum of Cape Town at the Concourse in the Civic Centre. The discussion was held on October 01, 2024.
During the discussion, the participants highlighted the need for an integrated public transport system with an efficient passenger rail service as the backbone. It was supported by other modes of transport and development in lower income areas to improve access to opportunities.
The city updated the Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP) for the year 2024 and confirms a worrying 89% of commuter trips in Cape Town, which are road-based, unsustainable and unaffordable to both the city administration and residents.
Capacity of the road is expanded and is extremely expensive. It is time consuming and provides only short-term relief as evidence which shows that the new roads and lanes are only attracting more private vehicles onto the road network.
Several city councillors and members participated in the discussion which was facilitated by the Niel Slingers, who is the City Director of Transport Planning and Network Management. The participants were Member of the Mayoral Committee for Urban Mobility – Councillor Rob Quintas; Regional Manager of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa – Raymond Maseko; Advocate for sustainable mobility – Nicky Sasman and Marli Swart, who are the city transport planners and the Chief Engineer of Road Traffic Design from Western Cape Government – Sarah Chow.
Councillor Quintas said that the challenge is getting people onto public transport. He expressed that this is their first strategy in combatting congestion. They need people on buses where the MyCiTi bus service was operated with passenger rail as the backbone of public transport, as is the case elsewhere in the world.
According to Quintas, the City of Cape Town is currently busy with the roll-out of the largest public transport infrastructure project in South Africa. The implementation of the second phase of the MyCiTi bus service will connect the communities who belong to the metro-south east with Wynberg and Claremont is the biggest life changing investment in public transport since the implementation of passenger rail, that happened many decades ago.
“It is a mammoth project and we are tackling it incrementally. Thus, the City of Cape Town is doing its part in moving Capetonians,” said Councillor Quintas.
Concept of ‘induced demand’ insofar relates to new road infrastructure provision, majorly to alleviate traffic congestion.
Induced demand means to put efforts to increase capacity by building new road infrastructure that is only a short-term solution, given that the new lanes only attracted more single occupancy vehicles to the road network until the new roads are once again filled to capacity.
The City of Cape Town is exploring the implementation of new lanes and infrastructure that are reserved for the use of public transport vehicles only.
Quintas said that they will bring a greater return on the high costs of expanding road capacity, which is aligned with the objective of prioritising public transport. Then it will facilitate a modal shift from private vehicles to public transport services over time.
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.