The status quo discussed in Section 1.1.3 verifies that there are simply too many vehicles on the extended Stellenbosch road network at specific hours of the day (i.e. the demand surpasses its capacity), and that long-term growth cannot be withstood. The greater part of intersections on the main roads operate at a Level of Service (LOS) F (Sinclair et al., 2012), and in most instances, all probable alternative routes to a driver do not bestow any significant gain in terms of travel time and / or delay. The Stellenbosch Municipality is one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country, and peak-period traffic congestion will spread over a longer time span if capacity problems remain unresolved. In terms of the school learners surveyed, for an average 65.1% of high school learners, the mode of transportation to and from school daily is the private motor vehicle. For primary school learners, the average is as high as 85 to 90%. A prominent, but not exclusive, reason is that parents have the freedom of choice as to which school their child/ren attend/s - resulting in longer travelling distances to school when compared to previous generations (Carver et al., 2013). Above and beyond the adverse travel and environmental impacts of traffic congestion, the economic consequences are momentous. Kumar et al. (2012) clarify why this is so:
“traffic congestion and its associated costs may decrease a city’s productivity and limit its growth and development through a multitude of urban dynamics, including: (i) deterring companies from further investment in the city, worse still, driving companies to move away, (ii) consuming too much of the residents’ time, energy and resources to permanently restrict their ability to improve their lives through skill upgrades or entrepreneurial activities.”
Sinclair et al. furthermore see the traffic congestion as an issue of road safety:
“congestion has also been shown to be a factor in the growing incidence of transport-related stress, potentially resulting in depression, aggression and disaffection, which have the potential to impact on driving behaviour and hence undermine road safety.”
1.2.1 ALTERNATIVE CONGESTION RELIEF MEASURES
It is apparent that the town of Stellenbosch urgently needs to move towards sustainable transportation and hence find a solution to the traffic congestion problem. Various congestion reduction strategies are presented in this subsection and reviewed in terms of their appropriateness
Page | 11 to Stellenbosch. These strategies comprise roadway capacity expansion, transport pricing reforms, smart growth, transportation demand management, and improvements to the alternative / space- efficient modes. The final words lie with the need for NMT, however.
1.2.1.1 ROADWAY CAPACITY EXPANSION
Roadway capacity expansion is a congestion reduction strategy that is motor-vehicle orientated, and “… can include new and expanded roads and bridges, wider and straighter lanes, intersection flyovers, traffic signal synchronizations, reduced cross-streets and crosswalks on arterials, reversible lanes, conversion from two-way to one-way streets, automated highway technologies, half-width vehicles, improved incident response, and various Transportation Systems Management (TSM) strategies” (Litman, 2015). When any of these forms of expansion are implemented, authorities are indirectly stating that travel by private motorised transportation modes is accepted and supported. Although commonly considered, this strategy is costly and only a short-term solution, as urban sprawl will continue and more traffic will be generated (i.e. the congestion dilemma will present itself again over time). It is thinkable to balance the cost of roadway expansion projects through the use of road tolls. Tolls, however, often cause traffic volumes to decline on the tolled road, which not only causes toll road projects to fail in achieving their revenue targets, but also results in recurrent rat-running and congestion on adjacent roads. In the case of Stellenbosch, the expansion of the existing road network is constrained by the town’s historical buildings, its prominent aesthetic value and simply insufficient vacant land in the central business district (CBD). The capacity problem is evident when considering that the university has a shortfall of 3,500 parking spaces for the university population (Vela VKE Engineers, 2011), which is most probably even greater today. Allowing more traffic to enter the town only increases the demand for parking spaces even more. It thus becomes clear that the town cannot ‘build’ its way out of congestion.
Another option to reduce the congestion in Stellenbosch (already considered by the municipality) is the construction of bypasses that divert all through-passers in order to reduce their contribution to CBD-congestion. The author believes that this envisioned improvement will have marginal effects on the internal congestion though, as many trip destinations are located in town.
1.2.1.2 TRANSPORT PRICING REFORMS
Different transport pricing reforms can be implemented to reduce congestion. One such reform is congestion pricing, which refers to road tolls that charge road users higher fees during the peak hours to reduce traffic volumes and increase vehicle operating efficiency at these times of the day. Congestion pricing tends to have lofty implementation costs and raises concerns about privacy. Other pricing strategies include higher parking rates at times and places with a high parking demand, increased fuel taxes and distance-based pricing (i.e. pro rata vehicle insurance premiums and registration fees by vehicle miles travelled (VMT)). These tend to apply to a larger portion of road users, and hence tend to be more effective.
Transport pricing reforms are only fair though if alternative routes or modes are made available, since not all road users have a choice as to when and how much they travel. With no alternatives, road users are forced to pay, which (besides the complaints) does create revenue, but does not reduce congestion. There are the options to either price only one lane on a highway, so that motorists have an uncongested
Page | 12 alternative, or have a designated High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane that lower-occupancy vehicles may only use if they pay a toll. Stellenbosch neither has competitive alternatives available to its commuters, nor are any of the inbound / outbound roads highways. Pricing strategies will therefore, at least for now, not be able to provide the congestion relief the town is desperately seeking. It will only be efficient if implemented together with an alternative.
1.2.1.3 SMART GROWTH
According to Litman (2015), smart growth is“… a general term for various policies that create more
compact, multi-modal communities where residents tend to own fewer vehicles, drive less and rely more on space-efficient modes”. There seems to be disagreement as to how much smart growth affects
congestion. Among the main smart growth features are increased development density and a more connected road network. The former reduces trip distances, and the latter reduces the amount of traffic concentrated on the arterials. (Litman)
The town centre of Stellenbosch is already built up, and it would be near to impossible to redevelop it based on today’s knowledge of the traffic congestion hotspots. For all the new developments to be constructed on the outskirts of Stellenbosch, smart growth features could form part of the planning process, but Stellenbosch’s high commuter traffic and attractive destinations make the positive impacts this will have on congestion relief highly questionable; not every development can have its own educational institutions and CBD, for example.
1.2.1.4 TRANSPORTATION DEMAND MANAGEMENT
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) is a general term used for various strategies that increase transportation system efficiency, and as a measure of congestion relief encompasses an improvement in the availability of predictive and real-time travel information. This information (conveyed, for example, via Variable Message Signs (VMS), maps, radio, websites and mobile applications) allows commuters to respond to delays and alter their schedule, route or mode choice if necessary. As with the transport pricing reforms, the information is only a congestion reduction strategy when alternatives are available, which is currently not the case for Stellenbosch.
1.2.1.5 IMPROVING ALTERNATIVE / SPACE-EFFICIENT MODES
With the congestion reduction strategies discussed heretofore all ruled out as a solution to Stellenbosch’s congestion problem, solutions are thus limited to optimising the efficiency of the current system (e.g. optimising traffic signal timings), but more importantly the search for alternative-mode transport systems, as optimisation is only sufficient up to a certain demand. Investing in transportation modes that require less space, such as NMT and public transit, is therefore a crucial solution to the urban logjam (Buis et al., 2000). Figure 1.5 shows the amount of space occupied by 60 persons in light motor vehicles, a bus, and on bicycles. It is clear that cyclists and persons utilising public transit services occupy a lot less space on the roads. It is only on narrow, congested roads with moderate to high speed traffic, where faster vehicles cannot easily pass cyclists, that cycling can actually increase delay (Litman, 2015).
Comprehensive public transit in Stellenbosch is a plausible solution, but will only be efficient if the public transit vehicles travel with high occupancies; empty buses will increase congestion. It is thus NMT that stands out above all measures of congestion relief.
Page | 13 Figure 1.5: Space occupied by 60 persons and their respective modes of transport. (Kovach, 2013)
To quote the Stellenbosch Municipality (Stewart Scott International, 2010):
“Non-motorised Transport (NMT) as an essential daily transportation mode needs to be supported, developed and promoted in all environments to provide safe, direct, convenient and sustainable access to all destinations. Within the current social and economic environment, there is an urgent need to reduce our dependence on the (use) of private vehicles as a main transport mode to one that is conducive to walking, cycling and other forms of NMT.”
1.2.2 EXISTING NMT INFRASTRUCTURE AND PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
In South Africa, transport policy now strongly advocates for the development and prioritisation of cycling as a mode of transport. In December 2014, the Department of Transport released its NMTFacility Guideline – a revision and update of the existing Pedestrian and Bicycle Facility Guidelines
(2003). The guideline aims to assist practitioners in the planning, design, implementation as well as maintenance of cycling, walking and other NMT facilities. Whilst no significant transformation of the Stellenbosch road network specific to cycling has taken place, there has been a substantial improvement in the general NMT network (mainly through the construction of NMT pathways). Given that some of these pathways are effective basic links for cycling, an initial network of safe cycle routes is emerging. These NMT improvements stem mainly from the proposed list of implementations in the two NMT plans that were prepared for Stellenbosch. These are:
1. Stellenbosch Non-Motorised Transport Network Plan, prepared in 2010 by Stewart Scott