Remedy apartheid spatial patterns and remove barriers to access, but not at the expense of our suburb, says Kristina Davidson.
Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s slogan may be “Making progress possible… together”, but Brett Herron’s article ( “We can’t stop the bus to suit a few”, Cape Times, January 22) shows that “together” does not include communities and other stakeholders.
The approach taken by the city is the total opposite of that adopted by the City of Medellín in Colombia, the international success story of integrated rapid transit (IRT) and BRT.
Like South African cities, Medellín faces challenges of informality, poverty, inequality and violence. The city’s vision puts people – especially the poor – at the centre of development.
Public transport is addressed as part of an integrated whole, involving urban designers, town planners, engineers and academics. It is not solely the domain of traffic engineers, transport planners and technicians. A key element of success is community involvement, whereby municipal staff engage with communities living near the projects through participation processes. Out of these processes came the novel idea of cable car systems (Metrocables) that enabled communities living on steep mountainside slopes to access public transport networks.
While we are not suggesting that Cape Town should build more cable cars, perhaps if the city had agreed to meet us, as we have been requesting for nearly a year, Herron would not have included so many inaccuracies and flawed arguments in his article:
* The city does not own all the properties that fall within the proposed “new” South Road scheme.
* The “new” South Road goes nowhere near the Wynberg CBD. To access the CBD would require either going along Main Road (parallelling existing public transport, which makes no sense in terms of IRT) or building the Brodie Road couplet, which has never been approved by council or proclaimed by province. The process that still needs to be followed will take years and is unlikely to be successful, as (a) the couplet would require a number of private properties to be purchased/expropriated, which would cost millions of rand, and (b) the road runs through a designated urban conservation area and would entail demolishing 100-year-old cottages.
* The 2002 resolution taken by the Protea subcouncil is used as justification for the Brodie Road couplet, but only selected phrases and certain recommendations are quoted. The resolution actually says that “no phase will be commenced before an extensive meaningful public participation process has taken place and overwhelming support of the public is obtained”. Considering that there has been no consultation with the community since 2002, it is surprising that the couplet has been included in a tender document, especially as the civic organisations in West Wynberg (ie the Wynberg Residents’ and Ratepayers Association, the Wynberg Improvement District and the Old Wynberg Village Society) are all on record as being opposed to the scheme. Furthermore, the resolution also recommends that the original bypass scheme 656 and the Main Road widening scheme be deproclaimed, and that the approved bypass scheme for PMR 5 be amended to allow for the deproclamation of the scheme south of Wellington Road. Yet this has not happened.
* Urban renewal in Wynberg does not need a kick-start. The revitalisation of Wynberg began in 2000 with the establishment of the Wynberg Improvement District. The plans Herron refers to are out of date and no longer relevant (like the 60-year-old road schemes). The CBD is not in decline: existing businesses are still going strong (Wynberg Pharmacy and L Cohen Outfitters have both been in business for over 60 years) and a number of new developments have occurred. Of course, were the city to go ahead with the Brodie Road couplet and turn Main Road into a one-way trunk road between Wetton Road and Kemms Road (as envisaged), the effect on businesses would be disastrous.
* The South Road/Brodie Road couplet will not simply “impact some property owners”, it will transform the very nature and functioning of our suburb. Running a new, four-lane trunk road (Wynberg/Plumstead side) and a new, two-lane, one way road, just half a block from the existing Main Road (in west Wynberg) through well-functioning residential areas will cause extreme disruption. Residential fabric will disappear as a result of commercial creep, affecting property values, while increased traffic volumes, pollution, speeding and taxi off-route issues will create additional risks to pedestrians.
Instead of focusing on the minutiae of lease agreements and making the same old inaccurate statements, Herron should perhaps review the process followed by city officials and answer these questions:
1. Why are well-built, council-owned cottages in Wellington and Tenby roads standing empty and falling into disrepair when the city is facing a housing crisis?
2. Where will the funds come from in order to purchase (then demolish) the properties that are still privately owned, assuming the owners are prepared to sell?
3. How can the city design a BRT route as part of an integrated public transport network without including the taxi industry, which currently transports the majority of commuters in Cape Town?
4. Who instructed the contractors to start demolishing houses (in Rotherfield, Lympleigh and Waterbury roads) before the demolition had been approved by the council? (Demolitions began in December, but the related item appears only in the January council agenda).
5. Why was the Brodie Road couplet included, when it has not been approved by council or been through any public participation since 2002?
6. Why is the city implementing 60-year-old road schemes without carrying out environmental impact assessments?
7. What is the economic justification for turning Main Road one way for just 1km between Wetton Road and Kemms Road? Nowhere else along Main Road, from Cape Town to Simon’s Town, is there a one-way section.
8. When did the Lansdowne-Wetton Corridor become the Ottery-South Road scheme, and what feasibility studies were done to support this deviation from the city’s approved IDP and SDF?
We agree on the need to remedy apartheid spatial patterns and to remove barriers to access, but it should not be done at the expense of one of the oldest suburbs in Cape Town. As we have repeatedly stated, we support the MyCiTi/BRT concept and recognise that improved public transport can play an essential role in addressing the spatial and socio-economic inheritance in Cape Town. However, building new trunk roads and a bridge runs contrary to BRT principles and will cost millions: according to the National Treasury’s 2011 Local Government Budgets and Expenditure Review (page 161), new roads cost tens of millions of rand per kilometre.
Nowhere else in Cape Town has the MyCiTi routes required major new roads to be built through established residential areas or houses to be demolished. It is incomprehensible why this should be the plan in Wynberg… unless it’s a sneaky device for funding roads that no one except the traffic engineers wants under the guise of a BRT route.
There are alternatives that will cost less, use existing road infrastructure and, most importantly, connect to the transport interchange. This will enable MyCiTi commuters from the 35 communities to transfer seamlessly to other modes of transport or have safe pedestrian access to Main Road and between East and West Wynberg.
We again call on Herron to work with the community to make progress possible, through the most economically and socially efficient solutions.
* Kristina Davidson is chairperson of Wynberg Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association (WRRA). She writes on behalf of the WRRA, South Road Families Association and Wynberg Taxi Forum.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Cape Times