Rory Williams
In this space on December 29, David Lipschitz wrote about what he sees as the City’s deliberate neglect of Cape Town’s car drivers.
There is no denying that traffic congestion and delays have increased over the years, but unfortunately his argument is a bit muddled.
He tries to make the case that the municipal government is “working for itself” rather than for its citizens, using the idea that it is prioritising its own systems (as if MyCiTi buses were not for the public to use) and not allowing alternatives on MyCiTi bus routes, thus forcing drivers to choose between cars and MyCiTi buses.
It’s not clear why he thinks the city’s buses should not be supported. The municipal government finally has the ability to plan and (at least partially) implement a public transport system that can be co-ordinated with land use planning – a need that Lipschitz himself alludes to.
He suggests there should be services competing directly with MyCiTi on its routes, but what car drivers really need as a viable alternative is an interconnected, high-quality network that complements the bus service without undermining its financial viability. What he seems to miss is that the strength of alternatives like metered taxis and Uber is that they provide more flexible services than buses because they don’t stick to fixed routes or schedules. The City of Cape Town is not opposed to these, in any case.
It is ludicrous to say that taking road capacity away from cars and giving it to buses constitutes the city taking space from its citizens. What it is doing is providing new ways for more citizens to use the space, and there will need to be more of that – not just for buses, but for bicycles and pedestrians and potentially other transport modes that are better at serving diverse needs.
Zooming in on traffic delays on the few roads that MyCiTi buses currently use, or where traffic signals need adjusting, is myopic. To offer the City a real solution, we need to see that car drivers are actually a privileged minority, and that changes must come if the City is to better serve its residents.
And throwing in the assertion that road tolls are another way in which the municipal government is ignoring its citizens is simply wrong, since the City of Cape Town is fighting against Sanral tolls.
Lipschitz also blames municipal government for “implementing a massive growth strategy to increase square metres of office, conference, hotel and private living space in the central business district (CBD) and close to it”. There are several ways in which this is misleading.
Firstly, the City’s planners recognise that growth needs to be distributed to create more balanced movement patterns, and it is municipal policy to encourage growth along public transport corridors and in development nodes throughout the city. There is no special CBD focus.
Secondly, if the CBD experienced strong residential growth, roads would be used more efficiently because more people would travel in the opposite direction to peak flows. It is not helpful to object to all forms of development – it’s the mix that matters.
Thirdly, Lipschitz gives municipal government more credit than it deserves in being able to influence private sector development decisions. Property owners in the CBD already have vast unused rights to develop under the zoning scheme, and the question is how to improve the tools available to city planners to shape the city.
The real issue here is balancing competing priorities, which is why it is disappointing that Lipschitz doesn’t move beyond the parochial and contribute more substantially to the broader debate about creating an equitable city.
The City of Cape Town is grappling with these issues, and I’m sure their engineers and planners would appreciate suggestions. But let’s not pretend urban efficiency is just about moving cars faster. It is, among other things, about how everyone can have access to the places they need to reach; whether for work or shopping or education or looking for a job.
For the City to work for us all, it needs to change to something new, not revert to past patterns.
The question is, what is to be done? And how can citizens contribute to constructive engagement on the substantive issues? Governance can always be improved, but it’s time for civil society to move past commenting on the story unfolding, and start writing the story as it should be.
@carbonsmart