South Africa's changing land transport landscape; the role of Municipal Government under the National Land Transport Act

Abstract

Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

The introduction of the National Land Transport Act in 2009 fundamentally altered the landscape of transport provision in South Africa. For the first time, the municipal government sphere has been given responsibility for the bulk of functions related to public transport. Municipalities are now responsible for the development, implementation and monitoring of land transport strategies in their area. Whilst most of the metros already have established capacity to deal with some of these duties, already constrained local municipalities outside of the metros face many challenges in taking on these new responsibilities. This paper outlines some of the institutional mechanisms available to local government under the NLTA to build up organizational and financial capacity through support from national and provincial government whilst at the same time allowing the delivery of the most appropriate scale of public transport services to take place at the local government level.