A traffic congestion management plan for Gauteng?

Abstract

Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 8-11 July 2013 "Transport and Sustainable Infrastructure", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

With traffic congestion acknowledged to be a major problem in our cities, much thought has been given to ways of managing it. It is neither desirable to focus on a sectoral approach to implementing congestion management measures; nor is it sustainable to implement a variety of Transport Demand Management (TDM); Transport Supply Management (TSM); and Land-Use Management (LUM) measures, on a piecemeal basis. To overcome the strictly sectoral application of such measures, Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) have the scope to integrate supply, demand and land-use management measures, as they have a strategic position within regional planning that coordinates and aligns many sectoral functions at local and district level. This paper highlights the need for the development of a Traffic Congestion Management Plan (TCMP) as a component of the South African planning system’s delivering balanced packages of measures. It also considers a TCMP’s likely structure, and examines the way in which to focus sectoral integration and alignment more directly in the management of traffic congestion in a sustainable manner.