Cape Town - The City has set aside R80 million to relieve congestion on Cape Town’s roads during this financial year.
In a budget statement, the City's transport directorate said: “Transport has a key role to play in making Cape Town a viable and competitive global investment destination. As the directorate confronts its challenges and embraces new opportunities, organisational change is required.
“This includes an appropriate institutional vehicle for MyCiTi, a complex programme that currently cuts across departments within the directorate.” The budget also states that there is a risk of the fare income being lower than projected if competing modes increase their market share - for example, if minibus taxi services expand or lower their fares."
Some of the directorate’s major capital programmes include congestion relief, non-motorised transport, roads rehabilitation, public transport interchanges and metro roads reconstruction.
Traffic congestion in Cape Town costs R2.8billion a year as the failure of people, goods and services to reach their destinations on time leads to lower job growth and decreased attractiveness for investment.
Professor of Logistics and Transport Economics at Stellenbosch University, Stephan Krygsman, said: “As transport infrastructure goes, R80m is not a lot, and I sincerely doubt it will have a major impact. And it will depend on what they are going to do with this - expanding the road capacity or providing alternative public transport. Cape Town does have a congestion problem and it is mainly due to the fact that there are very few other options compared to the private car.”
Krygsman said one of the problems the City faced was a lack of funding.
Mayoral committee member for transport Felicity Purchase said: “It is important to note that this lockdown will inevitably result in work on some projects being delayed. The extent will only be assessed once the lockdown has been lifted. As for traffic relief, this issue will be dealt with once life returns to normal,” she said.