Transportation : a tool to combat challenges in global city regions

Global City-Regions are regional economies that consist of one or more functionally linked metropolitan areas and their surrounding hinterlands. As an increasing number of regions across the world aim to attain Global City-Region (GCR) status, this paper describes a few of the challenges that are faced by these city-regions, as well as transportation interventions that can be used to combat some of these challenges. Broadly categorised, these challenges include socio-economic challenges as well as land use management challenges such as spatial fragmentation. Through consideration of the integral role that transportation plays in GCRs across the world, particularly the role of transportation interventions and their effects on mobility in the Gauteng City-Region, it was concluded that transportation is indeed a tool, when implemented correctly, which can be used to effectively combat challenges in GCRs.Paper presented at the 34th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 6-9 July 2015 "Working Together to Deliver - Sakha Sonke", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.The Minister of Transport, South AfricaTransportation Research Board of the US

Time-series analysis of accessibility in the city of Johannesburg

Accessibility, a concept that has been extensively studied and developed since the late 1950s, describes the ease or difficulty of reaching a destination from a particular location. Within the corpus of accessibility measures is the Net Wage After Commute (NWAC) which describes the potential wage earnable less the transport costs incurred to commute to work from a particular location. The NWAC explicitly accounts for transport costs as a measure of impedance which is crucial in a province like Gauteng with low transport affordability. This study explores the evolution of accessibility for poor, public transport captive households in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) by calculating accessibility to jobs from a select group of locations biennially from 2009 to 2013. A time-series analysis of accessibility reveals that accessibility improves from one analysis year to the next primarily due to increases in the potential wage earnable. Although fully operational since 2011, the analysis reveals that the Rea Vaya BRT (Phase 1A) only makes a notable addition to job accessibility from Soweto in 2013. However, its limited catchment area relative to existing services, amongst other things, limits its effects on accessibility. Development of economically vibrant corridors along BRT routes could assist in leveraging this service.Papers presented at the 36th Southern African Transport Conference, CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa on 10-13 July 2017.Transportation research board of the national academie

The Use of CoAXs in Tshwane to Communicate Transport Impacts in Stakeholder Engagement

Collaborative Accessibility-based Stakeholder Engagement (CoAXs) is an interactive planning tool intended to enhance public participation in planning public transport systems. To assess its applicability in various contexts, it has been implemented in the United States, in Chile, and, as presented in this paper, in Tshwane, South Africa. Tshwane is two years behind its plans to expand the A Re Yeng Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, largely due to initial resistance by private vehicle users to the city’s Line 2B expansion plan. Using an adapted version of CoAXs that allows users to create scenarios by selecting Line 2B route options and visualise the corresponding accessibility impacts, four public engagement workshops were conducted in July 2018 in Tshwane. Using surveys and observations during the workshops, this study finds that CoAXs moderately broadened the users’ scope of expected impacts of the BRT route options and prompted different user groups, especially private vehicle users, to empathize with users of other transport modes. CoAXs was effective in facilitating and supporting public engagement conversations, although more understanding and consideration of the variation in appetite for such engagements across interest groups and over the project timeline will be helpful in the future.Papers presented at the 38th International Southern African Transport Conference on "Disruptive transport technologies - is South and Southern Africa ready?" held at CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa on 8th to 11th July 2019