Development of guidelines for public transport facilities within the Ethekwini municipality area

Abstract

Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

This study was undertaken as a supplement to the National Department of Transport’s guidelines for the Design of Combi Taxi Facilities which was published in 1990. Certain components of this guideline document have since become obsolete due to the changing face of public transport within South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of the Guideline Document for the provision of public transport facilities within the Ethekwini Municipal Area (EMA). The growth in public transport demand has resulted in the mini-bus taxi services responding almost instantaneously to this demand while forcing other public transport services off certain routes. Requests for facilities from the taxi industry, ward Councillors and others have increased, with rival taxi associations requesting separate facilities. This has been done without an understanding or appreciation for co-ordinated transport and infrastructure planning within a municipal budgetary process. These uncoordinated requests and demands have placed a strain on the financial resources of the city. National and international research documents were researched for the study. Pedestrian count information at various taxi ranks within Ethekwini was utilized to determine the current demand, as well as statistics from other public transport facilities nationally. Extensive consultation took place between officials from the Ethekwini Transport Authority (ETA) and the Consulting team to develop this concise Guideline Document. This paper further presents the output of the Guideline Document, which has become a useful asset which the ETA officials can utilise to provide high quality public transport facilities along concentrated public transport routes. This will in turn aid in improving access to good quality public transport through the provision of aesthetically pleasing, efficient and high quality public transport facilities.