Public Transport

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Overview of Public Transport

While public transport is a huge field and can’t possibly be covered in a few pages, the benefits for cities of a move towards improved public transport are so significant that the sector must be addressed, if fairly broadly. In this section we provide an overview of the key issues and hopefully strengthen the case for prioritizing public transport in South African cities.

The focus of this section is on how to achieve a transport modal shift in South Africa. Modal shift should be viewed from two perspectives:

a shift from private to public or non motorized transport of daily commuters.

 optimizing the use of public transport.

A large percentage of commuters use private vehicles. In the large metropolitan cities, the modal split is generally 50% private to 50% public transport going into the CBD. Generally the private commuters are single occupancy vehicles which lead to increased congestion and inefficient fuel consumption with associated high levels of carbon emissions. The transport sector is responsible for 25% of carbon emissions in South African cities.

Available public transport services differ across cities. In most cities there are bus and minibus taxi systems, with rail found in the main metropolitan cities, but not in the smaller cities. City bus and train systems provide the most efficient forms of transport in terms of energy per commuter kilometre; however, even though these are by and large the same price or cheaper than minibus taxis, they are underutilized. This is due to:

Inconvenience. Bus and train systems do not service many informal settlements and are often not well linked in to an efficient network of transport systems.

Unreliable reputation.

Perception that they are slower than taxis.

Safety concerns, particularly on trains.

There is a need for large scale infrastructure to improve the current public transport system in order for it to improve its current share of commuters.

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