Trasnsport plan reviewed

Joburg's Integrated Transport Plan will be reviewed with public participation, to get a better understanding of people’s transport challenges and needs.
DURING Transport Month, the City of Joburg will start a review of its Integrated Transport Plan (ITP) to see if it is still in line with the needs of its residents.

MMC Rehana MoosajeeMMC Rehana Moosajee (Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg)The last ITP was approved by council in 2003 and expired in 2008. It involved providing affordable public transport, convenient and accessible transport, and a transport system with reduced crime, collisions, injuries and fatalities.

Other goals for the ITP were to provide comfortable public transport that met the needs of different people in the city. It was also aimed at providing the kind of public transport system that offered residents a choice in terms of transport services.

The old ITP will be reviewed to check what can be improved. The review will be done in two phases, with the first phase involving a household travel survey, transport information register and parking audit.

“The Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan will be a very important document to guide how the City will provide, integrate and support public transport, walking and cycling,” says the City’s member of the mayoral committee for transport, Rehana Moosajee.

Travel
The City will be look at Joburg residents’ preferred modes of transport, where they travel to, their reasons for travel and their times of travel, according to Daisy Dwango, from the City’s transport department.

Commuters will have a sayThe survey will give insight into travel behaviour of residentsThe survey will be done in two stages: the pilot phase and the actual survey. The pilot phase will start in October and end in November. The actual survey will begin in January 2012 and run up until June.

She says some 8 000 households will be visited as part of the survey.

“From these households, we will learn the travel behaviours of Joburg residents. We will then get to know how many people are using public transport and how many are using private transport.”

It will help the department find out where there is still a need for more resources. The project is expected to take six months.

Parking
In the parking audit, Dwango explains that the department aims to find out how people use non-residential parking lots. Through the survey, they will be looking at how many hours people use parking spaces per week.

Public parking Public parking in Newtown“From this, we are hoping to establish a parking policy; we will also investigate ways to get revenue from these parking spaces.”

Proposed areas for parking to be studied include the inner city, Randburg, Sandton, Rosebank, Midrand and Sunninghill. They were chosen mainly because they have high traffic volumes during peak hours. They are also the main economic nodes for Joburg, according to Dwango.

In addition, a significant amount of work has been done in terms of upgrading public transport.

Phase two of the ITP, which is expected to be launched by Transport Month 2012, will mainly involve planning and public participation. The department will visit different wards to hear about people’s transportation challenges, and see how they can be helped.

Every municipality in South Africa is required to have a Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan, which must include proposed long-term networks for rail, buses and taxis.