Jo’burg’s plan to ease traffic congestion

The City of Jo’burg wants high-occupancy vehicle lanes re-instated along Gauteng highways to mitigate the negative effects of the controversial e-tolling system and encourage public transport use. This is one of the proposals by the city council to Sanral aimed at helping to alleviate highway congestion and to relieve the burden on the city's roads due to diversion of traffic trying to avoid the tolls. The proposal is contained in the city's integrated transport plan framework which sets out its objectives, vision for its transport system, and the strategies it intends to pursue to achieve them.

The framework outlines some of the major developments and failures over the past 10 years which had left the city with fragmented public transport and clogged roads. In 2006, the right-hand lanes of the Ben Schoeman highway were demarcated to allow only public transport and vehicles with more than three passengers to travel within them. Electronic signs along the freeway indicated when the lanes would be restricted: on weekdays from 6 to 9am, from Pretoria to Jo’burg, and 3.30 to 6.30pm from Jo’burg to Pretoria. Although the pilot of the high-occupancy vehicle lanes was hailed as a success, it was not implemented. Now the city says the lanes will be “suitable for express, inter-city and intra-Gauteng services”.

The council says Sanral had agreed that the goal was to increase public transport vehicles using the Gauteng freeway network, which would, in turn, warrant implementing dedicated public transport lanes and park and rides along the freeway system. Jo’burg has a population of more than 4-million and projections show this is expected to reach 8-million by 2040. Most commuters use minibus-taxis with an estimated 32 taxi associations controlling 1 013 different routes. The city estimates there are at least 12 300 short-distance taxis operating on various routes. Public transport demand in Jo’burg is projected to more than double over the next 25 years.