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DO WE need to manage the flow of traffic on our roads? Without question.
Are we going about it the right way? That’s the issue.
In some ways it’s amazing what we are able to do. I sat in on a presentation by director of ITS Engineers, Christoff Krogscheepers, at the 32nd annual Southern African Transport Conference, held in Pretoria last week.
After the launch of the pilot Freeway Management System (FMS) along the Ben Schoeman Freeway in Guateng, similar systems were rolled out throughout Gauteng, in the Western Cape and in KwaZulu-Natal.
Krogscheepers showed how the systems have been, used over the past three years, to improve the clearance of accident scenes – down, in one case, from three-and-a-half hours to two (considering that every hour the freeway is clogged by an accident stymies the travel plans of something like 9 000 vehicles, that’s a significant improvement).
This is at least in part because people know that someone’s watching them, he says, thanks to the cameras monitoring the roads.
But it's also because all the bodies involved in freeway management are now sitting down together regularly and thrashing things out: why did an incident take so long to clear? Which did not respond promptly and why – and what can we do about that?
But of course, incidents and accidents aren’t the only thing that causes congestion: sheer volume of traffic is also to blame, and there’s an urgent need to reduce congestion.
In Gauteng, it’s risen by 30% in a decade and a third of drivers every day spend 45 minutes in stop-start congested conditions, according to Dr Werner Heyns, an associate of global consultancy ARUP, who presented at the same conference.
What would a decent congestion management plan look like?
Dr Heyns says from a road user’s point of view, it needs to be user friendly and transparent; from the road authority’s point of view, it should have explicit and relevant goals which enable it to determine funding and revenue.
From the point of view of society as a whole, it should be fair and offer value for money, there should be alternative forms of transport available, it should involve revenue recycling (the revenue should be ploughed back into the transport system whose users have been tapped to generate it), there should be a tolerance of non-compliance, and it should be introduced gradually.
Nodding along yet? Dr Heyns was essentially - without mentioning it once - talking about that well-known controversy currently besetting Gauteng.
You know, the one that side-swiped the Western Cape recently, the one that we feel fairly sure is Coming To A City Near You.
If we accept that we need to manage congestion by reducing the levels of traffic on major roads, and if we accept that our road authorities need to generate additional funds to pay for the maintenance of a road system which is (if I’m to believe other speakers at the conference) among the better systems worldwide, then how do we achieve these goals?
Dr Heyns laid out a strategy which made intuitive sense to me.
You don’t take what an audience member in a different session, talking about Bus Rapid Transit, called a ‘Big Bang’ approach – basically you implement something and then say:“Ta-da! There you are, Mr and Mrs Public, stakeholders, society at large!”
You do things incrementally, in gradual steps (very transparent steps) that allow the public to grasp and understand each phase - softly softly.
You improve your basic public transport, extending networks, making them more reliable and safer, and allowing the public to get used to the idea that public transport is a viable and user-friendly option, not just for the poor, but for anyone who would like to spend less time driving.
“If that alternative isn’t there, you might struggle to sell the whole idea,” says Dr Heyns. “Congestion management relies on a wider transport system which must run like a well-oiled machine.”
Next up, you improve some of the strategic road infrastructure.
On those limited sections (if I understood Dr Heyns right) you pilot ‘demand management’ – shall I say for the sake of argument, a system like, ummm, tolling?
And here’s where you don’t shake fists and threaten - you tolerate non-compliance, you say you understand, you give people a chance to see what this will mean for them, whether they’re using the new infrastructure or the extended, improved public transport.
But at the same time, you demonstrate that revenue generated from that will - for definite, without question, provably - go straight back into the roads.
Look, Mr and Mrs Public, you say, with the money you paid us for choosing to use (hypothetically) the Western Bypass between Malibongwe Drive and Rivonia Road, instead of jumping on one of the clean, regular buses that we now have tootling between relevant and useful nodes, we have improved this whole section of road.
After all, “We want to convince the public that this is not a bad thing,” says Dr Heyns.
Now I wonder if we could re-engineer that Thing in Gauteng so that we can get public acceptance?
Here’s a possible first step: in another session, transport elder statesman Paul Browning suggested looking once again at the first pillar of the Public Transport Action Plan, which called for an improvement in public transport, and see “What we can do, starting tomorrow” to improve and extend current public transport modalities.
How about it, guys? I’d love some public transport that I could use to get my butt out of the driver’s seat and into a window seat with an MP3 plugged into my ears…
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
Are we going about it the right way? That’s the issue.
In some ways it’s amazing what we are able to do. I sat in on a presentation by director of ITS Engineers, Christoff Krogscheepers, at the 32nd annual Southern African Transport Conference, held in Pretoria last week.
After the launch of the pilot Freeway Management System (FMS) along the Ben Schoeman Freeway in Guateng, similar systems were rolled out throughout Gauteng, in the Western Cape and in KwaZulu-Natal.
Krogscheepers showed how the systems have been, used over the past three years, to improve the clearance of accident scenes – down, in one case, from three-and-a-half hours to two (considering that every hour the freeway is clogged by an accident stymies the travel plans of something like 9 000 vehicles, that’s a significant improvement).
This is at least in part because people know that someone’s watching them, he says, thanks to the cameras monitoring the roads.
But it's also because all the bodies involved in freeway management are now sitting down together regularly and thrashing things out: why did an incident take so long to clear? Which did not respond promptly and why – and what can we do about that?
But of course, incidents and accidents aren’t the only thing that causes congestion: sheer volume of traffic is also to blame, and there’s an urgent need to reduce congestion.
In Gauteng, it’s risen by 30% in a decade and a third of drivers every day spend 45 minutes in stop-start congested conditions, according to Dr Werner Heyns, an associate of global consultancy ARUP, who presented at the same conference.
What would a decent congestion management plan look like?
Dr Heyns says from a road user’s point of view, it needs to be user friendly and transparent; from the road authority’s point of view, it should have explicit and relevant goals which enable it to determine funding and revenue.
From the point of view of society as a whole, it should be fair and offer value for money, there should be alternative forms of transport available, it should involve revenue recycling (the revenue should be ploughed back into the transport system whose users have been tapped to generate it), there should be a tolerance of non-compliance, and it should be introduced gradually.
Nodding along yet? Dr Heyns was essentially - without mentioning it once - talking about that well-known controversy currently besetting Gauteng.
You know, the one that side-swiped the Western Cape recently, the one that we feel fairly sure is Coming To A City Near You.
If we accept that we need to manage congestion by reducing the levels of traffic on major roads, and if we accept that our road authorities need to generate additional funds to pay for the maintenance of a road system which is (if I’m to believe other speakers at the conference) among the better systems worldwide, then how do we achieve these goals?
Dr Heyns laid out a strategy which made intuitive sense to me.
You don’t take what an audience member in a different session, talking about Bus Rapid Transit, called a ‘Big Bang’ approach – basically you implement something and then say:“Ta-da! There you are, Mr and Mrs Public, stakeholders, society at large!”
You do things incrementally, in gradual steps (very transparent steps) that allow the public to grasp and understand each phase - softly softly.
You improve your basic public transport, extending networks, making them more reliable and safer, and allowing the public to get used to the idea that public transport is a viable and user-friendly option, not just for the poor, but for anyone who would like to spend less time driving.
“If that alternative isn’t there, you might struggle to sell the whole idea,” says Dr Heyns. “Congestion management relies on a wider transport system which must run like a well-oiled machine.”
Next up, you improve some of the strategic road infrastructure.
On those limited sections (if I understood Dr Heyns right) you pilot ‘demand management’ – shall I say for the sake of argument, a system like, ummm, tolling?
And here’s where you don’t shake fists and threaten - you tolerate non-compliance, you say you understand, you give people a chance to see what this will mean for them, whether they’re using the new infrastructure or the extended, improved public transport.
But at the same time, you demonstrate that revenue generated from that will - for definite, without question, provably - go straight back into the roads.
Look, Mr and Mrs Public, you say, with the money you paid us for choosing to use (hypothetically) the Western Bypass between Malibongwe Drive and Rivonia Road, instead of jumping on one of the clean, regular buses that we now have tootling between relevant and useful nodes, we have improved this whole section of road.
After all, “We want to convince the public that this is not a bad thing,” says Dr Heyns.
Now I wonder if we could re-engineer that Thing in Gauteng so that we can get public acceptance?
Here’s a possible first step: in another session, transport elder statesman Paul Browning suggested looking once again at the first pillar of the Public Transport Action Plan, which called for an improvement in public transport, and see “What we can do, starting tomorrow” to improve and extend current public transport modalities.
How about it, guys? I’d love some public transport that I could use to get my butt out of the driver’s seat and into a window seat with an MP3 plugged into my ears…
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
