Transport Minister Dipuo Peters announced that government intends to spend over R5 billion on planning, building and operating integrated public transport networks in the next year.
Transport Minister Dipuo Peters announced that government intends to spend over R5 billion on planning, building and operating integrated public transport networks in the next year.
Officially launching this year’s Transport Month on Tuesday 1 October, the minister said 13 cities will benefit from this cash injection.
It is hoped to ease congestion on South African roads.
Under the theme 'Celebrating 20 years of delivering efficient, reliable and safe transport services', Peters highlighted the ongoing interventions to curb road carnage and the progress government has made on providing an efficient and reliable public transport system.
Both Johannesburg and Cape Town, she said, have already constructed over 20km of dedicated bus lanes on which services are operated. These are supported by over 100km of complementary, feeder and distributor service routes.
The two cities will also expand Phase 1 Rea Vaya and My CiTi services to carry up to 100 000 passenger trips a day on each system, which on average transports over 40 000 people to and from work daily.
Work in progress
The George Municipality in the Western Cape, which has been labelled as the new entrant to the public transport network development enterprise, will complete its full city-wide network at a more modest scale than the metropolitan areas.
Buffalo City, Ekurhuleni, Mangaung, Msunduzi and Polokwane will complete their public transport network development planning and service contract designs during the course of the next year. They will commence with network development in the 2014/15 financial year.
Peters recommitted the government to reducing road fatalities by half before 2020. But she said there had to be tougher enforcement as more than 90% of road accidents occurred as a result of traffic violations.
Public transport campaigns
Peters said her department is running several campaigns with special focus paid to public transport, considering that 80% of the population are dependent on public transport.
Their attentions won't be on heavy freight vehicles and public transport vehicles such as minibus taxis and buses only, but they will send out a clear message of zero tolerance to everyone.
Road accidents
Peters said the estimated R306b lost as a result of road accidents was too much. “Behaviour that is inconsistent with the law must attract the necessary penalties… we are steaming ahead with our operations to rid our testing stations of corrupt practices,” Peters said.
The minister added that there was an inter-governmental team of experts investigating pragmatic and sustainable interventions aimed at curbing the high number of road accidents.
The team, to work closely with provincial and municipal law enforcement agencies, comprises senior officials from the Department of Transport, the Road Traffic Management Corporation, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency, the South African National Roads Agency and the Road Accident Fund.
Maintaining, upgrading of infrastructure
According to Peters, maintaining road infrastructure, upgrading rail infrastructure and services, and constructing and operating public transportation infrastructure will be the main focus of her department this financial year.
The minister said government needs to spend R30b a year on maintaining roads, but at the moment it can only spend R30b on both maintenance and new construction. – SAnews.gov.za
