(Mis)inclusion in transport infrastructure : the validity of user knowledge in mobility infrastructure interface

Abstract

The challenge of spatial transformation remains a key concern in the City of Tshwane’s (COT) reimagining of spatial access and agency. The combination of significant highway construction, inadequate development and land use planning, and an increasing need for housing, results in low density metropolitan areas and strip development along unstable and fragmented urbanisation. Combating inequality remains a testing undertaking, as the state lead endeavours at reducing inequality in our democratic dispensation have been unsuccessful in mobilising populations out of poverty. The study seeks to understand how matters of equity in the implementation of public transport have causal effects on commuters experience and aspects of user awareness integration in the service development. With context focused on the public transport nexus in the Hatfield, Tshwane and other adjoining networks. A variety of methods of inquiry are used, which include the analysis of hard desktop mapping, and ethnographic studies of observations and semi structured interviews. These are conducted to investigate and compare the misalignment in public transport efficiency indicators. The study is based on an epistemic justice perspective and the underlying soft infrastructure characteristics of user-centred hermeneutic injustice, as the subject highlights how unintentional acts of inequality can be carried out through social co-ordination. Results suggest other categories in legitimising effective transport are needed and that user knowledge perspectives in the logical formulation of mobility infrastructure. Incorporating commuter knowledge and intuitions may also offer insights into multimodal transport integration, ultimately influencing mobility and welfare.