Positioning a traffic congestion management plan within South African planning

Abstract

This paper on traffic congestion management in South Africa is from the proceedings of 14th International Conference on Urban Transport and the Environment in the 21st Century, which was held in Malta in 2008. The authors of this paper support the use of Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) to integrate supply, demand and land-use management measures within regional planning processes that coordinate and align many local and district level functions. Although the South African IDP provides a framework to develop potentially highly integrated strategies, this approach lacks a direct mechanism to manage traffic congestion as part of the IDP process. The authors report the results of a recent study that emphasized the need to develop a specific Traffic Congestion Management Plan (TCMP) as a component of the South African IDP. The TCMP should include traffic survey and assessment; a model that uses multi-modal travel options including highways and transit; assessment of traffic congestion, including that created by new and regenerated development; the identification of measures to manage traffic congestion; project scheduling, particularly for implementation of TCMP projects; the development of an investment strategy; and the monitoring and evaluation of completed projects.