Our Cities, Ourselves is an exhibition sponsored by the Institute for Transportation Development and Policy. It features ten cities that “have proven to be leaders in innovation in sustainable transport and are fertile ground for further transformation.” On my trip, I have visited three of these cities: Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, and Buenos Aires.
The exhibition was in South Africa during my stay there, but I waited to visit it until it opened at Argentina’s Museum of Architecture and Design. It was especially fun to read about the African cities I had gotten to know in an exhibit in South America. Speaking about the exhibition’s cities when it was in South Africa, the executive manager for planning and strategy at the Joburg Development Agency, Sharon Lewis, noted, “Nearly all of the cities are in developing nations, because this is where most urban growth will happen over the next 20 years. They have the opportunity to learn from and leapfrog over the mistakes made by developed nations, particularly the over-dependence of cars in the United States.”
Our Cities, Ourselves explores the use of bicycles, public space, and public transportation as tools to combat overdependence on cars in cities (PDF booklet highlighting these tools here). A video of the exhibit (in Spanish) is here.
For me, one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit in Argentina was a lecture by Columbia sociologist Saskia Sassen, who grew up in Buenos Aires. She shared her thoughts on transportation’s role in bringing about a “tipping point” in the fight for global sustainability. There are important “microprocesses” involved with transportation, and “we don’t need the big flagship project.” This was an important perspective to hear, especially given the publicity and flagship status cities tend to give to BRT projects. She also mentioned the prevalence of “sites in the city of non-voluntary immobility,” a phrasing I found helpful. A video of her remarks (in Spanish) is here.
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Bright Continent (via Andrew Boraine) has a striking photo feature about the car guards who work on Cape Town’s Long Street. Many of them come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo: “Most have lived along the river that feeds the heart of darkness. Now they trawl Cape Town’s brook of booze.”
I met a number of immigrants from the DRC, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and other African countries who were overqualified for their jobs in South Africa. Sam, a university graduate from Kenya who moved to Masiphumelele, was working as a house cleaner to pay the bills for his son’s medical care. Many immigrants face intense xenophobia, which exploded in a series of 2008 attacks.… Read the rest
Read Full Post | May 30 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |
Cape Town’s Metrorail Stations (by Wwwdigi (Own work) (CC-BY-SA-3.0), via Wikimedia Commons)
Cape Town has historically relied on extensive commuter rail infrastructure to meet commuters’ demands. The 118 Metrorail stations across the region serve 151 million passengers annually. Of Cape Town commuters who use public transport, 56% rely on Metrorail. Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria), KwaZulu-Natal (Durban), and the Eastern Cape (Port Elizabeth and East London) also have Metrorail commuter rail service. Despite the historical importance of rail, the last few decades have seen continued bureaucratic restructuring, chronic underfunding, overcrowding, and severe delays that threaten the viability of commuter rail service in South Africa.
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At a national level, South Africa has a well-developed rail system, with the 10th most trackage of any country in the world. Commuter service began operating in 1890, with a train between Braamfontein and Boksburg. Twenty years later, South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H) was created as the governmental agency to oversee this growing logistics network and manage the growing passenger demand. Ridership continued to increase through the first half of the 20th Century. The implementation of the Group Areas Act (apartheid) in 1952 “exacerbated the situation immediately, since it forced the Black working class population further onto the periphery of the urban areas, and further from their places of work” (From The People Shall Move). National demand peaked at the end of the 1970s, with nearly 500 million passengers being transported annually at a R250 million annual loss. In an attempt to reduce the amount of subsidies required, SAR&H was reorganized and renamed South African Transport Services (SATS).
In 1990, SATS was reorganized again; Metrorail (a subsidiary of freight operator Transnet) was contracted for operations in Cape Town and Johannesburg, while management was transferred to the newly formed South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC). In the decade that followed, train usage declined dramatically, due to the 1989 deregulation of the taxi industry and its subsequent expansion, as well as an epidemic of political violence on trains. As ridership decreased, operational subsidies boomed, reaching R600 million per year by the mid 1990s. Capital expenditures were largely neglected in the preceding decade by the security-focused apartheid government. Except for a rolling stock refurbishment program initiated by SARCC in 1994, the new democratic government similarly ignored rail capital expenditures, favoring more immediate social spending over long term rail investment. In 2006, Metrorail was transferred from Transnet to SARCC. Finally, in 2008 SARCC was renamed the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). The agency inherited a fleet of 4638 coaches that today has an average age of 40 years.
PRASA must address this legacy of underinvestment while coping with passenger demand that is again growing. Between 2001 and 2008, annual passenger rail trips in Gauteng (the province that includes Pretoria and Johannesburg) increased 22%, to 310 million. Cape Town has seen a 17% increase in commuters over past 2 years.… Read the rest
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Pictures from my weekend road trip to the Karoo Desert, which lies to the north and east of Cape Town:
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After being announced as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup in 2004, South Africa embarked on a journey of transportation transformation. The looming tournament helped fast-track a number of infrastructure projects, and the nation largely met the challenges of moving hundreds of thousands of spectators: KwaZulu-Natal opened its new King Shaka International Airport a month before the first kickoff, Gauteng’s Gautrain (more soon) was able to transport fans from O.R. Tambo International Airport to Sandton, and Jo’burg’s Rea Vaya helped clear Soccer City ahead of FIFA benchmark times.
In addition to these flagship projects, the World Cup (or simply 2010, as South Africans metonymically refer to the tournament) impelled some subtler changes in South Africa’s transportation landscape. A prime example is Cape Town’s Fan Walk, a corridor of pedestrian improvements between the city’s train station and Green Point Stadium. As the Christian Science Monitor reported, planners were completely overwhelmed by the massive turnout and positive response from both visitors and locals to this new walking infrastructure in the city; Capetonians have continued to use the fan walk for local soccer games, demonstrations, and (like me) the finish line festivities of the Cape Argus Cycle Tour.
The prodigious success of the Fan Walk demonstrates the power of walking as a “microprocess,” a term sociologist Saskia Sassen used recently in describing the potential of bike lanes (at a talk in Buenos Aires for the Our Cities Ourselves exhibit about transportation). As she said, to make global cities more sustainable “we don’t need the big flagship projects.” Indeed, the small infrastructure investment of the Fan Walk, hardly mentioned by city officials before the tournament, has served to catalyze and coordinate thousands of “pedestrian speech acts” (de Certeau) that collectively work to retake urban space from cars and reverse years of social division. The transportation legacy of 2010 is not just physical infrastructure, but, as Andrew Boraine writes, “attitudinal changes” as well.
It was only six years ago that architect Jan Gehl observed, “Pedestrians in Cape Town are a hunted race.” The World Cup helped with many improvements, but work remains to be done.
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Newlands Cricket Ground
At Newlands Cricket Ground, one of the most beautiful in the world with its sunset views of Table Mountain, I watched the Cape Cobras open their Standard Bank Pro20 Season. Twenty20 cricket is the shortest version (or, as a South African explained it to me, “the most bastardized version”), allowing a match to be completed in one evening (like baseball). The match I watched versus the Titans was a nail-biter; with only three balls (pitches) remaining, the Cobras needed 13 to win. In these last three balls, Morkel hit two sixes (home runs) and a single, leading the Cobras to a five wicket victory with zero balls remaining.
I had plenty of opportunities to watch more cricket (on television), since the ICC Cricket World Cup was taking place while I was in South Africa. While the one day international format was understandably paced more slowly, I found the sport (even in its less bastardized form) engaging. The tie between England and India and Ireland’s huge upset victory over England were both quite exciting.… Read the rest
Read Full Post | May 01 2011 | School Bus Migrations | 1 Comment » |
I started my time in South Africa by sitting in on a ten-day seminar about globalization, poverty, and the environment. This seminar’s focus on the country’s economic disparities, environmental challenges, and history of apartheid spatial planning served as an excellent introduction for my time in South Africa. It expanded my thinking about issues linked to transportation; for example, as one lecturer noted, the long commute times of South Africans who rely on minibus taxis tend to discourage home-cooked meals, undermining markets for fresh produce in township areas and increasing urban food insecurity. I learned a lot from the field trip focused on housing and water infrastructure in the Cape Town area. The seminar also helped me learn to appreciate the importance of cricket and braaing in South Africa.
To reach campus from the house I was staying at in Kenilworth, I relied on the University of Cape Town’s Jammie Shuttle. The free service’s different routes connect UCT’s campus, located on the slopes of Table Mountain, to nearby residential areas and public transport interchanges. When the Jammie Shuttle was inaugurated in 2002, the Mowbray/Claremont Main Road sector of the minibus taxi industry feared the new shuttles would be competing unfairly, so they blockaded routes and threatened violence. Successful negotiations between the University and minibus taxi representatives prevented serious problems. … Read the rest
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On the last of my four days in Zambia, I took a guided tour of the Livingstone Railway Museum. With the completion of the Victoria Falls Bridge in 1905, Livingstone became an important transit point in colonial East Africa. It was intriguing to see some of the remnants of this time. From Wikipedia:
In the mid 1890s Rhodesian Railways had reached Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia spurring industrial development there, fuelled by the coal mines at Hwange just 110 km (68 mi) south-east of Mosi-oa-Tunya. The railway was extended to Hwange for the coal, but Rhodes’ vision was to keep pushing north to extend the British Empire, and he would have built it to Cairo if he could. In 1904 the railway reached the Falls on the southern side and construction of the Victoria Falls Bridge started. Too impatient to wait for its completion, Rhodes had the line from Livingstone to Kalomo built and operations started some months in advance of the bridge using a single locomotive which was conveyed in pieces by temporary cableway across the gorge next to the bridge building site.[5]
With the new Bridge open in September 1905, Livingstone boomed and the British South Africa Company moved the capital of the territory there in 1907.[4] In 1911 the company merged the territory with North-Eastern Rhodesia as Northern Rhodesia.
Livingstone prospered from its position as a gateway to trade between north and south sides of the Zambezi, as well as from farming in the Southern Province and commercial timber production from forests to its north-west. A number of colonial buildings were erected which still stand.[3] Although the capital was moved to Lusaka in 1935 to be closer to the economic heartland of the Copperbelt, industries based on timber, hides, tobacco, cotton (including textiles) and other agricultural products grew up.
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On the afternoon I was there, baboons commandeered one of the trails at Victoria Falls.
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After my two-day train ride from Dar es Salaam and a quick overnight in Lusaka, I made it by bus to the town of Livingstone, Zambia. The town is named after explorer David Livingstone, who in 1855 was the first European to set eyes on the nearby Mosi-o-Tunya waterfall, which he renamed after Queen Victoria. I was in awe of the uproar and clouds of smoke-like mist billowing up from the falls, the largest in the world.
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The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara) provides twice weekly passenger service on the Cape Gauge track it owns between Dar es Salaam and Kapiri Mposhi. In January, I made the complete 1100 mile, 45 hour journey on the Kilimanjaro Express. It was one of the most impressive train rides I’ve ever taken.
The train had eighteen cars (6 third class/sitter, 1 diner, 1 lounge, 4 second class/six berth sleeper, 3 first class/four berth sleeper, 2 luggage, 1 staff) and two GE U30C locomotives. We departed from Dar es Salaam at 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, entering the Selous Game Reserve as a full moon was rising. Though I only saw a few baboons, it is not uncommon for passengers to see giraffes, buffalo, and elephants. I spoke for a while with Mr. Mkate, who works in the Tazara main office after serving as a locomotive engineer between 1992 and 1996. During that time, he killed between five and eight buffalo and several giraffes while driving the train. I guessed that when this happened, they would have to stop the train to check for damage and report the incident to park authorities; he told me that, in fact, they were prohibited from stopping so that train crew and passengers wouldn’t take the meat for themselves.
Even though I was on the express train (the trains departing on Friday are local trains), we still had to stop at many of the smaller stations for line clearance tickets from the station masters. According to Mr. Mkate, about half of the signals along the line are nonoperational, so manual clearance procedures are required. When I expressed my surprise about the number of derailed boxcars I saw along the route, he told me that these were mostly due to load shifting, but he feels that the railway is lucky to have not had a passenger derailment given its maintenance record.
I slept well the first night in spite of occasional wheel slippage and station stops. The next morning, I awoke to some spectacular views as we climbed into the mountains. The railway has twenty-two tunnels (the longest of which is over a mile long) and many bridges. I enjoyed breakfast in the dining car, then exchanged my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwachas with one of the money changers who boarded the train. When we passed the Mukuba Express heading in the opposite direction near the boarder, the money changers hopped off our train and Zambian Immigration hopped onto ours. The Tazara official from whom I had bought my ticket in Dar es Salaam told me it was preferable to get a Zambian visa in advance, but because I didn’t want to leave my passport overnight at the Zambian High Commission, he said that it was possible to get a visa on board the train. The immigration officials had not show up at my compartment by dinner time, so my new travel companions (a South Korean history teacher, a Japanese architect, and a Japanese travel agent) and I went to the dining car.… Read the rest
Read Full Post | April 26 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |
Rendering of proposed BRT in Dar es Salaam, showing its close resemblance to Bogotá's Transmilenio (by Luc Nadal for ITDP, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License)
Introduction
Bus rapid transit (BRT) has been promoted by various international consultants and experts as a viable transportation solution for Dar es Salaam’s worsening traffic congestion. As a transport model, it offers the potential to improve mobility without excessive investment or operating subsidies that would be inappropriate given Tanzania’s poverty. Yet despite readily available international funding and technical expertise for BRT, the existing fragmentation of bureaucratic and transit operating structures has delayed the implementation of BRT in Dar es Salaam. A brief overview of DART’s Phase I is below, followed by a more extensive discussion of the project’s background and potential pitfalls.
Phase I Overview
- 2002 – The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) drafts a bus rapid transit proposal with the Dar es Salaam City Council, predicting it will be Africa’s first bus rapid transit system
- 2003 – The City Council endorses the BRT proposal
- 2005 – BRT conceptual design completed
- 2006 – Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit Agency (DART) formed under the Prime Minister’s Office
- 2007 – Environmental impact planning completed
- 2008 – The World Bank approves a $190 million International Development Association credit, partly towards the BRT project; The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) completes the Urban Transport Policy and System Development Master Plan for the City of Dar es Salaam
- 2010 – President Jakaya Kikwete officially inaugurates construction on Phase I
- 21 kilometeters of dedicated lanes, closed system
- 29 stations, 5 terminals
- Cost of $125 million (including $20 million for expropriations)
- Cash and contactless card fare collection, baseline fare of 400 Tsh and transfer fare of 100 Tsh
Phase 1 Trunk Routes (from DART Investors Document), compare this to the red Morogoro Rd. lines on the diagram I made
Current Need for Transit Improvements – Congestion “Without Mercy”
From the Center for Economic Prosperity
Traffic congestion in Dar es Salaam is horrendous, the worst I’ve observed in my travels. I spent stretches of fifteen minutes at a time sitting in stationary daladalas on Morogoro Road (see my transit map of Dar es Salaam here). Mwinyi/Bagamoyo Road, another artery, can be even worse, since it is only one lane on either side of a poorly enforced “reversible lane” (which leads to regular games of low-velocity chicken). Average rush hour speeds on Mwinyi Road are about 7 mph, leading trips to take three times longer during rush hour than during normal flow. As the Center for Economic Prosperity reports, “It is undisputed that congestion is slowing down economic activities in the city without mercy.”
The costs of the city’s worsening congestion extend beyond commuters’ wasted time. Noise and air pollution from excessive congestion adversely affect public health. Particulate matter from old diesel engines is of particular concern, especially given a recent study’s findings that “asthma is an important clinical condition in sub-Saharan Africa [and there are] major gaps in clinical care, particularly in urban areas.”
Concentrations of particulate matter are much higher near the Tazara Intersection than at other sites nearby.
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Read Full Post | April 26 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 4 Comments » |
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