Mobility management in the context of this colloquium refers to policies and practices aimed at managing transport network efficiencies. This includes policies and practices to improve network speed of travel, minimise network stoppages, and minimise total travel time. This applies to the entire network, including public transport. A poorly managed network increases the costs of transport and becomes a bottleneck to the economy.
Objectives of the colloquium
Our objectives are to:
- Understand the current programmes of various transport entities related to mobility management;
- Identify potential areas for collaboration;
- Answer the question: How can we make our networks work smarter?
- Identify key obstacles working against progress; and
- Identify options for the way forward to mainstreaming mobility management in Gauteng.
Policy imperatives
The 5-year Gauteng Transport Implementation Plan published in 2012 as part of the ITMP25, implores us to optimise the utilisation of available infrastructure and resources. Therefore, before new infrastructure is built we need to always ask ourselves if we have done enough to optimise the use of what we currently have.
Our provincial transport policy recognises that smarter optimisation of transport operations can bring about benefits such as:
- Reduction of public transport fleet sizes, which are currently a large capital expense;
- Improved travel times on roads and on public transport; and
- Improved reliability of public transport services, which will in turn increase confidence from current users and prospective users.
Indeed, our plans mandate us to develop and implement minimum service levels for transport in the province, including such things as public transport punctuality, freight transport punctuality, and overall network reliability. The policy also mandates the province to address critical gaps that include skills and retention of existing expertise and improved management of intelligent transport systems contracts.
Our policy places emphasis on public transport modal integration to improve services. We cannot afford to have public transport services operating as islands. Through integrated ticketing initiatives, that will see one ticket for all public transport modes, we must ensure seamless travel for public transport users. This needs to move from being a concept to being reality.
All of the above, in large measure should have been achieved already. The question is what progress have we made to get there? What are we actively doing to get there? Is there anything we should be doing differently to get there?
What is certain is that to achieve all the above we need all the spheres of government working together.
Notable trends
The demand for travel in our province is increasing at an unprecedented rate. This is mainly due to increasing population, attributed mainly to in-migration. Our population growth rate is the highest of all provinces in the country.
The 2016 mid-year population estimates published by StatsSA in August estimates the provincial population at 13.5 million, implying that an additional 2.5 million people have since been added to the province since the last census. The question is how has the transport infrastructure changed in the past four years to accommodate the growth?
The navigation devices company, TomTom, estimates that commuters in the City of Johannesburg spend an extra 27 percent of their time more than they should in traffic during peak periods, and this is on the increase. This is a result of a combination of things that include:
- Vehicles on the road that exceed capacity of the network at given times;
- Inappropriate intersection controls;
- Non-optimised and poorly co-ordinated traffic signals;
- Malfunctioning traffic signals;
- Poor traffic law enforcement; and
- Lack of information on the part of commuters on options to travel faster.
The province’s 2014 Household Travel Survey shows that travel time across all modes of transport has increased, including travel time on commuter trains which have the right of way.
One of the most worrying features of our public transport services is the absence of timetables at public transport stops. It is almost impossible to post these timetables because of the unreliable network speeds. However, current technology allows users to use their smart phones to locate exactly where the public transport vehicle is and what time it is expected to arrive at a stop.
The ongoing initiatives between SANRAL and municipalities in the province are noted. Among them is the process of rolling out a freeway management system for all of the province’s freeways. This includes such things as incident management and information dissemination to improve road users’ decision making. This should solve problems relating to long response times, incident clearance times and traffic flow restoration times. Through the existing SANRAL freeway management systems, the incident detection times have been reduced to real time responses. We need to build on these capabilities in the province.
What we need out of this colloquium?
In this colloquium, we should have a conversation about mobility management issues with the aim of working towards implementable solutions.
The Colloquium must not be a discussion only about technology and gadgets. It must also not turn into a blame session, although we need to learn from our mistakes.
The colloquium must be a conversation that we ought to have had since the publishing of the ITMP25 and the GTIP5 implementation plan on options for travel demand management Gauteng.
Out of this colloquium we need to actively inform what needs to happen in our province to regain its competitive advantage with regard to transport efficiency, and how this will link with the proposed Gauteng Transport Authority.
