City of cape town’s transport response to covid-19 regulations and directives

Abstract

The sudden declaration of a State of Disaster in South Africa at the end of March 2020, and the subsequent regulations governing the transport sector in how to respond to and mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 disease, caught all levels of government off guard in terms of ensuring that the transport fraternity complies with the provisions of the State of Disaster. The Western Cape Provincial Government and City of Cape Town (the City) very swiftly established a joint Transport Coordinating Committee (TCC) to respond to the everchanging transport regulations and to monitor compliance in the public transport sector during the State of Disaster. With no prior disaster as a point of reference, it was literally a case of building the plane, whilst flying it for both spheres of government in dealing with the transport response during the pandemic. The work done by the TCC and several other transport reports received from within the City, other external role players as well as parastatals, were combined in a daily Transport Dashboard to reflect different alert level scenarios and informants, vehicular movement and accidents on the freeways, any incidents on the network and road infrastructure, passenger usage of subsidised services, minibus taxi services and infrastructure, COVID-19 compliance at facilities and on vehicles, the Urban Mobility Directorate’s staff working status and the Transport Information Centre performance in terms of public enquiries as a result of the COVID-19 Disaster. The purpose of the dashboard, was to provide the Political and Administrative leadership in the City, responsible for transport related matters, a regular snapshot of the situation on the ground during the pandemic.