Cape Town - The city council’s mayoral committee has adopted a new, long-term spatial and transport plan aimed at making the city more compact, denser and concentrated around efficient and affordable public transport.
The Transit Oriented Development strategic framework prescribes how new developments across the city should take place over the next 16 years to overcome apartheid spatial inequality, the high cost of public transport and future urbanisation.
The city council said it wanted to see new developments become a high-density mix of housing, shopping, recreational and transport choices. Residents should be able to walk, cycle or use public transport to get there.
Mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron said: “The strategy is intended to create a more efficient, equitable and inclusive city that’s more sustainable and liveable.
He said the city council wanted to balance travel patterns across the city by getting people to live and work closer to transport nodes. Ideally, all future development should be strategically located around public transport - either rail or MyCiTi routes.
On Tuesday the mayoral committee also gave its approval for the start of the long-awaited second phase of the MyCiTi roll-out from Khayelitsha to Strandfontein.
Herron said businesses and developers would be incentivised to locate new higher density developments near public transport routes. The council wanted future residential developments to cater for all income groups in relation to economic and work opportunities, he said, to reduce travel distances and travel times, and had already identified parcels of land to create these mixed-development precincts.
NEW ROUTES
“We cannot continue with business as usual, we need to reshape the city,” he said. “We’re confident we have the land and space to encourage this type of land use.”
Herron cited the CBD, Bellville, Claremont and Wynberg as areas where mixed-use developments could be encouraged.
The mayoral committee has given the go-ahead for detailed design work to start on the bus rapid transit Lansdowne-Wetton Corridor, which includes the T11 route from Khayelitsha to the intersection of Strandfontein and New Ottery roads. This route was previously intended to continue to Wynberg but court action in 2015 put the brakes on that plan.
The T12 route, meanwhile, will be developed between Mitchells Plain and Claremont.
Herron said the vast majority of Wynberg residents were supportive of the city council’s transport plans, but forces were working against the council to prevent the roll-out. Failure to develop the routes sooner was also part of the reason the city council had to return funds to Treasury, he added.
The Transit Oriented Development strategic framework will be presented to the full council for adoption at the end of the month. Council will also have to sign-off on the future roll-out of the two new bus rapid transit routes.