Accommodating Walking as a Travel Mode in South African Cities: Towards Improved Neighbourhood Movement Network Design Practices

摘要

A combination of apartheid policies which dictated an analytical focus on the daily transportation of 'Coloured' and 'Black African' labour in and out of cities, and a framing of the passenger transport problem as one of traffic congestion and roadway construction in its alleviation, led to the imposition of limitations on the scope of past South African travel behaviour analysis. In many, if not most, instances, travel data collection was restricted to motorised trips - and often to just motorised trips to work activities - occurring within the weekday morning peak period when congestion is generally worst. As a result, little is currently understood of non-motorised, off-peak and non-work trip making. There have of course been a limited number of surveys that have looked beyond motorised, peak-period and commuter travel, and these provide, amongst other things, an albeit inadequate insight into the importance of walking as a travel mode in South African cities. The characteristics of walking trips in South African cities will be discussed later in this paper; suffice to note here that when travel analysis extends to cover trips for all purposes by all modes throughout the seven-day week, walking is found to be widespread, accounts for large amounts of travel time and covers considerable distances. In fact walking, more than any other mode in South African cities, rivals the motor car as a means of transportation, and for many young and elderly members of poorer households it is the only available mode of travel. Given this importance, this paper adopts as a starting point the position that walking needs to be analysed as a travel mode in its own right, afforded priority in town and transport planning practices, and accommodated equitably in improvement programmes. The purpose of the paper is to explore the specific implications this position has for the improvement of movement network design practices at a local neighbourhood scale. It will be argued later that walking has not been accommodated particularly well in South African neighbourhood planning generally, and in the design of local area movement networks more specifically.