Walking the talk
In the context of so much uncertainty and so little control, what if we empowered commuters with more choice?
Students in Khayelitsha travelling to technicon or university in Bellville will take either a bus or a taxi to Bellville station, and often walk the remainder of the distance to save money - making the entire journey very time consuming, energy consuming, and unsafe - vulnerable both to road accidents and personal attack.
What is the correct solution to this? The pro-Bellville regeneration and housing group will say it is affordable student housing in Bellville. The pro-non motorised transport group might say it is cycling infrastructure to allow students to cycle instead of walk the last few miles. The pro-public transport group might argue it is fixing integrated transport and ensuring that all modes are subsidised to be viable for the full journey. The pro-township development crowd might argue that it is bringing technikons and campuses to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain (an opportunity exists for this with Swartklip). The “but its the economy, stupid” folk will argue that we need to grow the economy (and ensure its growth is inclusive) so that these students can afford the full trip. Someone else might argue NSFAS must be expanded to cover transport costs (another way of talking about targeted subsidy). And so we will go on.
There is no obvious right or wrong answer to this - it is probably all of the above, and then some, given the scale of need and backlog when we consider all of the children, students, workers and work-seekers needing to move about the city on a daily basis.
CapeTalk breakfast show host invited myself and current City of Cape Town Transport Mayco member Roberto Quintas to discuss transport on her show this morning. The listeners had great questions, and we hardly scratched the surface of the issues to unpack - such is the enormity of the topic and and the urgency of the need to improve the quality of mobility services and infrastructure.
Before the pandemic, Cape Town was the most congested city in South Africa. Mobility data shows (and any of you who are out and about on the roads will know) we are fast moving back to that scenario. Our rail service was declining and not keeping up with demand, especially on the central line for several years, followed by a sharp decline caused by vandalism and organised theft, which PRASA now leads a concerted effort to recover from.
As a result, many commuters are left paying for the more expensive minibus taxi option - which also offers substantial benefits in terms of access, flexibility, reliability, regularity - but comes with concerns in terms of safety, comfort and a lack of dignified dedicated infrastructure and, of course, subsidy.
Many residents are frustrated with the apparent lack of ability to keep up with the basics - to deal with potholes or sewage spilling where we need to move, provide for decent walkable infrastructure, maintain taxi ranks, repair traffic lights, issue important parking management contracts, issue MyCiti operator license contractor (N2 route) and so forth.
In this context, it can be hard to be aspirational - but we absolutely have to be.
Uncertain times
On the one hand, we have the existing challenges and backlogs in services described above, and growth in population and households - the majority of which is informal. On the other, we have levels of uncertainty that mean the traditional engineering and planning led approaches to transport departments are no longer sufficient.
We are presented by taxi violence, an issue which requires working with the more regularised and willing taxi representatives, investing in infrastructure and services that support positive behaviour and reduce over-saturation and encroachment, improved data to ensure licencing is demand-responsive and innovative projects such as the Blue Dot project and the pilot Transport Operating Company project (item 16 in link).
We have uncertainty regarding whether and when rail will be devolved and to which sphere (the DA campaigned on rail being devolved to provincial level in provincial elections, and is now campaigning on devolution to local level in local elections - both spheres have spent money on feasibility studies and specialist reports into the matter, which requires clarity on approach between all three spheres of government, where national has indicated openness to devolution processes). In the meantime, all role players should be leaning in to support PRASA’s efforts to recover and modernise the service.
There are new technology entrants - “mobility as a service” - not only in passenger services (Uber, Bolt) but also in delivery services (enter the motorbike and pavement contestation, but also a highly valuable economic contributor that has kept restaurants alive during the pandemic); and questions regarding the entry of electric vehicles and implications for infrastructure and travel demand patterns. We do not know how fast and in which market segment these changes will take place (freight, passenger movers like taxis and buses, higher end private vehicles or lower end, new passenger services like small people movers or e-bikes etc).
And we have uncertainty regarding our future spatial form (not least because it is politically contested, but also because we are yet to see a real model of interventionist local government in the urban land market - for the most part, despite their best laid plans, in practice Cities follow both developers and informal settlers with infrastructure and services, not the other way around).
Towards new governance models
Some of the contributions to the transport system that the City has within its direct control are:
the ability to improve the quality of street infrastructure for all users of streets (not just private vehicles),
to improve urban management so that walking and waiting is safer and less “harsh” experience,
to provide certain mobility services directly (the BRT system - intended to complement not compete with rail and taxis, as the rapid people carrier filling the gaps in the current rail network, and using mini-bus taxis, walking and private vehicles as feeder systems)
to get serious about the relationship between land use and transport - no land use project should happen (we spoke briefly this morning about Conradie, Forest Village and the River Club as examples) without ensuring that there is transport infrastructure and allocation of licences built into the planning and design
Perhaps more importantly, however, when considering the range of problems, and degrees of uncertainty facing us, is the governance role of the City - working with communities, mini-bus taxi associations, PRASA, Provincial government, Golden Arrow Bus, private companies who are providing staff transport in large numbers, technology-companies and organised driver groups, and representatives of commuter interests.
Here, the City has an opportunity to position itself as a convenor of processes that result in sensible actions that either
regulate (impose licenses, fees, fines), or
enable (provide infrastructure and services to) or
directly invest in (finance and/or own) mobility solutions as they emerge.
In order for these processes (and platforms such as the Land Transport Advisory Board and Intermodal Planning Committee) to be robust and productive, the City should contribute reliable and useful data on the transport system, be accountable for its contributions and projects in the transport space and be open to the suggestions and innovations that emerge from other role players’.
Leveraging the single ticket
One of the processes the City has long pursued, but in a very top-down manner, is the introduction of an integrated ticket. Given the fragmented operator environment, this is complex to implement as it requires agreement on who will run the system - who will collect the revenue, audit the use of the system, and distribute the revenue among participants. This requires trust and transparency. There are also complications given the different ways of setting fare structures between rail, GABS, MyCiti and taxis. Perhaps not least important is the investment in infrastructure required to enable a single payment method - some form of “tap on tap off” system is needed, which requires devices and (wifi/fibre enabled) connectivity - who pays for this, maintains it, secures it across all operators? (Increasingly, a “bring your own device” app-enabled option seems the simple solution).
When rail was still running, but collapsing, I worked on a concept to use that as an opportunity for the “thin end of the wedge” for an integrated ticket - to offer payment to bus or taxi operators who collected stranded rail users, who had already paid for a rail ticket. This centred a very real pain-point for the commuter, and incentivised opt-in for other operators, while also requiring the establishment of the back-end auditing and fare system solutions that could eventually enable the broader integrated ticket solution.
That concept was never implemented, but I believe its principles can still be learnt from - instead of designing a whole-and-perfect system that requires massive up-front capital expenditure and whole-system buy-in; how can we address a commuter pain point, and encourage operators to opt-in to a new system?
This leads me to one of the more aspirational areas I believe transport could move towards: demand-side subsidies. We currently have a system where the supply of rail and bus are subsidised, and mini-bus taxis and other service providers are not. Demand-side subsidies go directly to the user, and are agnostic towards which mode they choose (or, with technology, could be scaled to different modes - in a “points” or “coin” system - if needed to provide certain financial guarantees).
Technology-enabled tools such as digital payment systems make these sorts of options much more viable today, and allow subsidies to be targeted and scaled according to income groups, specifically vulnerable groups, work seekers, students etc.
Introducing demand-side subsidies can be a powerful trigger towards an integrated public transport system: the user benefits immediately, while providers of mobility services immediately have a financial incentive to “opt-in” to the system - to subscribe to the rules of being able to accept that payment mechanism. Commuters will also “vote with their purse” in terms of which service is best (in our context we do need to consider the potential for extortive behaviours, forcing people onto specific modes).
Starting at home
There’s a lot more that can be said about the whole system.
I’ve written previously on the rail challenge, and have many ideas about what could be done with the Blue Downs rail link; the end of the line at Simons Town (ending it earlier at Fish Hoek, and introducing a bus and NMT promenade environment for the remainder of the route), and the central station (consolidating lines at Salt River, and developing parts of the land between Salt River and the CBD).
There are “missing rungs” in our range of mobility choices - compared to similar economies, we are missing smaller and cheaper taxi options like TukTuks and motorbikes; which also provide good entrepreneurial options for work seekers.
And there is so much that we all can do to start at home. All of us know the nearby subway, pedestrian bridge or hard to access greenbelt (often used as shortcuts) is in need of better maintenance, brightening up, widening and ongoing use to make it safer and easier to use. You know best what the issues are in your neighbourhood - it may be the widening of pavements, or the introduction of speedbumps or the cleaning of the local taxi rank. If everything else I have written sounds interesting, but far out of your control, reach out to your neighbours and your ward committee and start there.