Abstract:
As part of its Transport Studies Programme, the University of Cape Town (UCT) offers a
post-graduate course ‘Public Transport Systems Design and Operations Management’.
This 20 Credits (200 hours) course includes a major assignment where students,
individually, develop a Public Transport (PT) Corridor Plan for a corridor of their choice,
although not being an existing or planned IPTN corridor. In the 10 year existence of the
course in its current format, over 100 corridor plans have been submitted for different parts
of South Africa and some elsewhere on the continent. Listing those locations gives a good
indication of the spread of private and/or work origins of students in the Transport Studies
Programme, but also gives an indication where PT need improvements from these
students’ perspective.
Roughly a third of the plans were in the wider Cape Town area. This gives an opportunity
to assess a possible future PT network for the City of Cape Town and its surroundings.
The proposed future PT network (rail and BRT) would consist of several radial networks
around the Cape Town CBD, Bellville, and the townships on the Cape Flats, Khayelitsha
and Mitchells Plain, but should also include a radial network around Stellenbosch,
although not directly in the City’s responsibility. Furthermore, these submissions could
assist the City in their future IPTN planning. There are also lessons to be learned from the
common mistakes that the students (who are mostly transport professionals already) make
in actual PT planning situations.
