Decades of Learning from TrEnds in Land Use and travel:Travel and Transport Demand Estimation in the City of Tshwane

Abstract

The estimation of transport demand by means of computer software models plays a major role in the planning of transport infrastructure and services of cities. Continuing changes in the land use and transport patterns of a rapidly developing city such as Tshwane is a challenging process. The City of Tshwane (CoT) has a relatively long history of travel demand modelling that can be traced back to 1975. Significant changes in the demography, employment and economy, city structure and travel patterns took place over the last two decades. The institutional capacity of the CoT to develop and use travel demand models was increasingly challenged to keep abreast with improvements and complexity of IT technology and modelling software during this time period. New types of model software platforms became internationally available, which broadened the fields of application. The significant changes in the factors driving transport demand, required the City to adapt its land use and transport policies, which in turn required changes in the modelling requirements. A key policy change was the shift in the planning focus from private transport to public transport. This paper provides a summary of the trends that were observed with regard to the city’s population and employment, travel patterns, policy testing needs of the CoT as well as changes in municipal boundaries and software development. Relating these changes in the city’s conditions to the various models developed over time provides valuable insights into aspects such as data needs, monitoring of the transport conditions, and the use of transport models in the development of transport plans. These changes in the city over time required a major upgrading of the CoT travel demand modelling system to develop the recent 2015-2020 Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP) of the CoT. The Paper highlights the characteristics of the latest macroscopic travel demand model together with its planning and policy testing capabilities, as well as the benefits of the model. Similar to other cities in South Africa, the City of Tshwane also faces the challenges of a lack of institutional capacity to manage and use the modelling system. Training and capacity building therefore formed an important part of the 2015 modelling and transport planning process, which is reviewed in the Paper