Sustainable development? A practical tool for South African transport planners

Abstract

Paper presented at the 23rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 12 - 15 July 2004 "Getting recognition for the importance of transport", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. Post 1994 the transport sector, in line with most other sectors of South African government, underwent a period of fundamental policy shift. The principle cause of this was, of course, the new democratic government and the need to realign government policy with new priorities. The policy and strategy documents which were published reflect the transition to a more people-centered transport planning process, and use customers as a central theme. Coincidentally, the international transport planning scene was also undergoing a fundamental shift in the 1990s. The US and the UK both underwent a watershed period of transport policy change, with public transport receiving higher priority than ever before; integrated planning and demand management rising up the agenda; and the realization increasing that urban transport problems could not be solved by road construction. An additional policy issue was influencing planning circles during the 1990s, that of sustainability. The debate on sustainability peaked at the Rio Conference of 1991, and was revisited at the Johannesburg Conference of 2002. In South Africa, this concept is encapsulated in the National Environmental Management Act (1998), which is supposed to guide actions in sectors impacting upon the environment, including transport. However, it has been suggested that progress in the urban transport sector towards sustainability has been unsatisfactory. In June 2002 the Urban Transport Research Group (UTRG) of UCT entered into dialogue with the Environmental Protection Agency of the US concerning topics of interest in the area of urban transport and the environment. In response to this the UTRG proposed a project with the intention of developing a practical checklist for the assessment of policies, programmes and projects in the transport sector which addresses the sustainability, environmental and integrated planning requirements of policy and legislation. A partnership was formed between the Environmental Evaluation Unit (EEU) and the Urban Transport Research Group (UTRG) of UCT for the purposes of the project. This paper briefly outlines the findings of the project, which was divided into three phases: a current practice review; development of a checklist; and input from case studies.