Land use densities and public transport impact

Abstract

In most transport studies, South African Transportation Planners make use of manuals which do not explicitly define the calculation method for trips generated by Public Transport (PT) as a mode of travel, even though this assessment is required in many PT plans. The author?s 2015 SATC-paper investigated the Trip Generation for Public Transport (Onderwater, 2015) and obtained trip generation rates for public transport over a range of activities and income groups. These rates were calculated per person. However, PT-use is greatly determined by the density of people, activities and land use. This paper aims to determine PT trip generation rates per area, focussing on the eThekwini Region. In order to determine the densities of residential areas, data from the Census 2011 was utilised. For activity areas a telephonic survey was conducted, in combination with measurements obtained using Google Earth, in order to obtain additional information. The obtained data was then compared with Transit Oriented Development (TOD) policy, which is geared towards creating higher density areas nearby to transit routes. It was found that the densities suggested in the policy are extremely high for the current South African context, and would be unrealistic at this point in time. If these planned densities are used when planning and designing PT systems (as well as other infrastructure), it would result in unnecessary expenditure on infrastructure, which will be oversized and inefficient. It is therefore recommended that planned developments and the associated infrastructure planning should be reassessed. This will ensure maximum use of capital expenditure, and minimise unnecessary operational and maintenance costs.