A worrying 89% of commuter trips in Cape Town are road-based, which is unsustainable and unaffordable to both the City administration and residents.
This was according to the City’s updated Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP) for 2024.
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.
This was revealed yesterday during a panel discussion facilitated by the City’s Urban Mobility Directorate to kick off Transport Month.
The discussion centred around Cape Town’s traffic jams and participants, including the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility, Rob Quintas, and Raymond Maseko, Prasa Regional Manager, highlighted the need for an integrated public transport system with an efficient rail service as the backbone, supported by other modes of transport and development in lower income areas to improve access.
“The challenge is getting people onto public transport. This is our first strategy in combatting congestion,” said Quintas.
“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.”
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.”