How Cape Town plans on reducing traffic and emptying their roads
The City of Cape Town is one of the most congested cities in South Africa.
According to TopAuto, almost 90% of Capetonians are using the road network to get to work every day.
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The city's Urban Mobility Directorate recently held a panel discussion, during which they discussed how the metro is drastically looking to decrease this number.
During the panel discussion, the plan to decrease road activity included changes to public transport services and their expansion to previously excluded areas.
Cape Town management has revealed its updated Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan for 2024, which details the metro's traffic situation.
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According to reports, 89% of local commuters are road-based, 10% simply walk and 1% use passenger rail.
City representatives have said that the current distribution of commuters is unsustainable and expensive to maintain: 57.6% of citizens use private cars, 22.4% use taxis, and 6.9% use a bus service.
Increasing road capacity might seem like a simple solution, but that is not a long-term solution.
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Rob Quintas, Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility, explains that public transport is the solution, but the transition is difficult for people.
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.
Railways offer great potential, but they are plagued by a big issue: cable theft.
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The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was running a train every 20 minutes along its southern corridor as of March 2024, but it has continuously faced challenges that make it an unappealing transport option for many.
Raymond Maseko, the Prasa regional Manager, says that a train could accommodate as many as 1,200 people, removing an equal number of single-occupant cars from the roads.
The other main focus is Cape Town's MyCiTi bus service.
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The Mobility Directorate has several expansion projects in the works into areas such as Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain, Wynberg, and Claremont.
Our commitment to getting more people to use public transport is by undertaking one of the largest infrastructure projects South Africa has seen in a very long time and that is the phase 2A or South East corridor expansion of the MyCiTi network.
Management is also looking to invest in electric buses and new cycle lanes.
The good news for locals is that they are not yet considering a congestion tax.
Congestion tax is applied in many busy cities worldwide and "refers to a fee levied on drivers that’s intended to convince enough people to avoid hopping in their car at rush hour."
This would discourage drivers from using their cars and instead use public transport.
Quintas did state the obvious:
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.
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