Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.
Rapid urbanisation is a global problem affecting most developing countries. Current
statistics indicate that South Africa’s urban population is set to double by 2030.Urban
infrastructure expansion generally lags behind this exponential growth, especially in
African countries. This reality calls for smart responses, implying that current resources
need to be used more efficiently, catering for the needs of the ever increasing urban
population. Smart Transport is an innovative response to the urgent mobility and
accessibility needs of urban inhabitants. One such strategy is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
System.
Research into High Level of Service Bus (HLSB) systems, such as BRT has shown that
they can successfully improve urban mobility, while simultaneously reducing congestion,
energy consumption vehicular emissions and increase transit efficiencies. However, the
relatively high capital and operating costs of full specification BRT are prohibitive to many
local authorities.
In the long term, BRT has been selected as the preferred model for mass urban transit by
the South African government. To optimise service delivery, an opportunity exists to
identify alternative ways to implement HLSB. Hence, the following fundamental question is
investigated this paper: Is it possible to reap the benefits of a full specification BRT system
at a lower cost by tactical implementation of Bus Priority Schemes at strategic locations
along transit routes? Through the application of micro-simulation software, a number of
suitable transit priority schemes are modelled for a proposed transit corridor in Cape
Town. Preliminary outputs indicate that applying transit priority, such as Bus Signal Priority
can produce Level of Services (LOS), which are comparable to full specification BRT
Systems.
