Transport policy change and its implications for planning and engineering practice

摘要

The last decade has seen an important shift in South African passenger transport policy. Responses to congestion are no longer based primarily on the construction of additional road capacity. Current policy explicitly prioritises public transport and higher occupancy vehicles over single occupancy private transport, and has shifted emphasis from new infrastructure supply to managing and reducing the demand for travel and deriving greater use from existing system capacities. Experience in countries with similar resource constraints suggests that achieving policy objectives of stepwise public transport system improvement, car user mode switching; and travel reduction through improved land use efficiency are big, but not insurmountable, challenges.