Rory Williams
What is the Big Challenge for the city’s transport system? Is it congestion? Safety? Affordability? More bicycles? Fewer cars? It’s all of these, and none of them.
Our streets are designed for the same technologies as other countries (cars, buses, traffic lights, road signs…) using the same global standards that work elsewhere, and yet we don’t use the system as efficiently or as safely as other countries.
People like to say that South Africa is unique, with specific challenges requiring local solutions. That is partly true, but we are still waiting for many of those solutions. There is the minibus taxi industry, which doesn’t fit the regulatory environment that is meant to control it. What is the problem there? Do we blame pirate operators for undermining the financial viability of legally licensed ones, leading to dangerous driving behaviour and poorly maintained vehicles?
Do we blame the way operator permits are issued, or the terms of those permits, or even the structure of the city that forces minibus taxis to serve long commutes? These are real challenges, and different spheres of government have different degrees of influence over them, but they don’t get to the heart of the transport challenge.
Will the new MyCiTi bus system do it, once it is rolled out across the city? Or the network of bicycle lanes, or the improvements being made to the street intersections in the CBD?
If all the city’s policies could be transformed into workable plans, and these were carried out as intended, the city could work more equitably and effectively; but the reality is that if we are to afford everything that needs to be done, public infrastructure must be designed to achieve more than its conventional purposes.
What new value can transport add to make the city better? When we speak of getting more out of the system, we usually mean moving more people and goods – faster. There is logic to that, as cities get bigger and put more distance between people and their destinations, but it is a limited and limiting view of transport.
The thing that really makes South Africa unique, that prevents standard approaches from working to our advantage, is our particular combination of social and economic conditions.
I’ll explain.
We are a society with a lethal mix of impatience, anger and disempowerment that, as I suggested here last week, can be influenced by the design of public spaces. Our street culture as cyclists, pedestrians and drivers is the primary reason for our appalling road safety record. The cause is not bad engineering; it’s engineering that considers only the movement function of streets and not the other functions they can play.
Street intersections are places where drivers and pedestrians meet, and the design of intersections to control movement could be modified to engender better attitudes and behaviour. We could, for example, be encouraged to rely more on eye contact to read a person’s intent, and less on rules and design that tries to remove all possible conflict. The question of safety then becomes a question of how interaction can encourage co-operation and personal responsibility in something as basic as walking or driving down the street. The transport system design influences how we interact and can play a more constructive social role.
This is being explored this week in the Cape Town CBD as Open Streets, in partnership with the Western Cape government, runs a campaign of street performances to raise awareness of pedestrian safety. By observing behaviour and responses to performers, this campaign could help improve understanding of street culture and etiquette, and influence street design as well as educational campaigns.
Another place we can rethink design is at stations. We usually assume that the best design will minimise walking distance for people transferring between buses, taxis and trains; but where this is less than ideal, we should create some other benefit.
Can we design for this walking to give transferring passengers and others some benefit? For example, by integrating the flow with small businesses, or providing government service outlets, we can change our definition of efficiency from “efficient movement” to “efficient creation of value”.
If we see the challenge for transport planning as social and economic, we can find new design solutions. We can redefine how we look at problems like safety and congestion to ensure that solutions address broader issues at the same time.