Accessibility and social welfare : a study of the city of Johannesburg

Abstract

Within the corpus of accessibility measures is the Net Wage After Commute which describes the potential wage earnable less the transport costs incurred to commute to work from a particular location. This study examines the time-series development of accessibility, using this poverty-relevant metric, from townships in the City of Johannesburg, biennially from 2009 to 2013 when accessibility patterns were altered as a result of major investment in the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system Rea Vaya. Furthermore, a difference-in-differences methodology was adopted to explore the effect of access to the BRT on the welfare of lower-income households, investigating the premise that transport related benefits brought about by such investments translate to social welfare improvements. The results suggest that significant time-series changes in accessibility patterns are driven by improved affordability of public transport against the backdrop of decentralisation, particularly for low-income areas in the peripheries of the city. However, the marginal benefits of improving accessibility from regions with already high levels of accessibility are relatively low. The BRT improved accessibility to jobs from Soweto, but only minimally, suggesting that in polycentric regions like Johannesburg which grapple with poor modal integration, investment in improving accessibility to an already well accessible CBD could potentially result in only minimal improvements in accessibility. The difference-in-differences model revealed that implementation of the BRT did not result in any significant welfare improvements for the served community. However, an increase in the accessibility to jobs offered by the BRT resulted in a larger increase in the social welfare of those in close proximity to the service than it did for the wider community. This suggests that the BRT in Johannesburg is beneficial as a transport project to users within close proximity to the service, but not as a general urban intervention able to uniformly improve the overall amenity of the served community.