Safe public transport will beat cars

Utury.

NLESS we plan now the time will come

when our streets will become so choked

that we shall have to refuse to allow

more vehicles to use them.

These words have a distinctly contemporary ring

to them – not least in the light of this week’s an-

nouncement of a R750 million injection to relieve

traffic congestion.

Yet, this anxiety about choked roads dates back

to the almost unimaginable urban setting of 1944.

Fittingly, it was expressed by city engineer,

WS Lunn, whose heady forecast of an unworkable

future – 25 years hence, in 1960 – was based on

“Union statistics” suggesting that for every vehicle

then on the road, there would be 10 in a quarter cen-

“I shudder to think,” he wrote in the Cape Argus

some six months before World War II ended, “how

our present streets system could cope with that in-

crease. Unless we plan now…” and so on. The only

alternative he foresaw in the pre-apartheid 1940s

was “large-scale surgery to cut new traffic arter-

ies”, the cost of which would be “stupendous”.

That, of course, is what the city got – along with

more and more cars.

While, today, planners unanimously believe the

only sustainable option is public transport, the car

remains a stubborn habit – simply because it’s per-

ceived to be safer and more convenient.

There is a shift, though: the MyCiTi service, for

all the often petty point-scoring over it, is a signal

departure, along with the work of Transport Cape

Town, the over-arching transport authority that is

driving the new agenda.

High fuel prices and wasted time in peak-hour

queues are a deterrent, but the truth is until public

transport is safe and dependable for those who can

choose – the growing middle class – the car, and traf-

fic congestion, will remain.