Christoffel Venter

Gender, Residential Location, and Household Travel: Empirical Findings from Low‐income Urban Settlements in Durban, South Africa

Abstract Urban development and transport policies designed to improve the livelihoods of poor communities need to consider the particular needs of women to be effective. Gender roles are played out in a spatial world, and can thus be expected to vary across the urban landscape. The paper examines empirical relationships between spatial factors—in particular residential location within the city—and travel behaviour for men and women in a cross‐section of low‐income communities in a large metropolitan area in South Africa. Data from a comprehensive household survey show that locality has a significant influence on gender experiences of mobility. Gender differences are greatest in more distant, rural localities, although site‐specific characteristics such as walking access to social services, informal work, and small‐scale agriculture help alleviate women’s inequitable travel burdens. Central localities display the smallest differences between men and women’s travel habits, supporting the notion that the high access afforded by centrally located housing helps to promote the satisfaction of women’s daily needs as well as their strategic empowerment. Households in peri‐urban and peripheral localities suffer the highest travel burdens, having neither the high access of a central location nor the livelihoods‐enhancing amenities of a rural environment. Women bear a large part of this burden. Urban development strategies to benefit the urban poor while promoting gender equity are highlighted, including an added emphasis on the provision of social and educational infrastructure within closer proximity to peripheral residential areas, coupled with better pedestrian access.

Cost and Productivity Impacts of a “Smart” Paratransit System

The cost and productivity impacts of an advanced paratransit system are analyzed; the system uses a digital geographical data base and an automated trip scheduling system to automate vehicle and passenger scheduling functions. The results indicate that such a system enables transit agencies to accommodate rapid increases in the paratransit demand in an efficient manner, which could not be accomplished by a manual or semimanual scheduling system. For the case study presented, this new system resulted in 13 percent savings in unit transportation operating cost and a significant increase in the percentage of shared rides. These benefits were achieved without affecting passengers’ travel time or ride comfort.

Transport expenditure and affordability: The cost of being mobile

Measuring and understanding the transport expenditure patterns of households and individuals is critically important for formulating pro-poor transport policies, as well as for monitoring their effectiveness. This paper reviews evidence on transport expenditure and affordability in South Africa, focusing especially on low-income and mobility constrained persons. The results indicate that a persons location along the urban–rural continuum significantly affects both their transport expenditure levels and the perceived severity of their transport affordability problems. Public transport users in displaced urban settlements and isolated deep rural locations and medium-income car commuters in suburbs and urban townships face the highest transport expenditure and affordability problems. Disabled and elderly people were found to have similar expenditure patterns and perceptions as travellers at large. Spatially targeted interventions in both transport supply and land use policy are suggested to address transport affordability problems in South Africa.

From Basic Rights to Full Access: Elements of Current Accessibility Practice in Developing Countries

Improving access to transport systems and mobility of people with disabilities is a necessary element of alleviating poverty in developing countries. A selected overview of the progress made toward achieving improved access is provided. It is based on an ongoing 3-year research program on access needs and approaches in a selection of developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A generalized framework is suggested for describing the progress made across different countries. Many least developed countries are at the bottom of a continuum of activities in which issues of human rights and access to basic mobility are still paramount. Others, such as countries in Latin America, have made significant progress on access issues in major cities and are faced with challenges of expanding improvements to noncore areas and to less well-regulated modes. The framework is used to suggest some critical priorities for countries at various levels of development.

The equity impacts of bus rapid transit: A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport

ABSTRACT The paper offers an analysis of empirical evidence on the equity impacts of operational Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the Global South. The focus is on vertical equity, i.e. whether BRT systems achieve progressive benefits for poorer segments of the population. Findings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America all suggest that BRT does offer significant benefits to low-income groups, in terms of travel time and cost savings, access enhancement, and safety and health benefits. However benefits are often skewed toward medium-income users and thus less progressive than they might be. Two primary reasons for this are insufficient spatial coverage and inappropriate fare policies. While many features of BRT potentially allow it to deliver pro-poor outcomes, such outcomes only materialize if BRT implementers pay specific and sustained attention to equity. The paper identifies key issues that need to be addressed to steer BRT implementation toward more socially sustainable outcomes—including better integration with other transit, paratransit, and nonmotorized transport services, and with the housing sector.

Interactive Learning through Gaming Simulation in an Integrated Land Use–Transportation Planning Course

AbstractThe paper describes the use of gaming simulation in the teaching of integrated land use–transportation planning as a part of an undergraduate civil engineering course. A key innovation of the UPTown game developed at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, is the way in which the actions of both public-sector planners and private-sector real estate developers are simulated by students. This allows students to explore the problems of conflicting objectives and to discover the value of cooperative planning in the land use and transportation development process. The paper describes the background to and rationale for an integrated planning course, and it explains the game and simulation aspects in detail. Assessment of student performance showed that the game significantly enhanced the achievement of learning outcomes. Students who faced more complex and open-ended tasks performed better, reaching higher levels of competence earlier on in the game. The paper should be of value to educators who wish...

Use of Multisource Global Positioning System Data to Characterize Multiday Driving Patterns and Fuel Usage in a Large Urban Region

The paper describes the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) data obtained from commercial and project-specific sources to examine the travel behavior and fuel consumption patterns of drivers over a 3-day period in Gauteng Province, South Africa. Data for commercial (truck and light delivery vehicle) traffic were obtained from a commercial fleet management provider that continuously tracked the movements of 42,000 vehicles. Data for private car users came from a panel of 720 drivers, whose multiday driving activity was tracked by mobile passive GPS loggers. The driving behavior of the two driver populations was analyzed and compared in terms of the total distance traveled: spatial patterns (e.g., the amount of travel on different types of road) and temporal variations (e.g., variations between times of day and between multiple days). The detailed nature of the GPS data permitted the estimation of fuel consumption at a very disaggregate level (by link and time of day) and the identification of differences between user groups; these factors have significant implications for transport and energy policy. A new indicator, the recovery ratio, was introduced to assess the relationship between fuel use and distance traveled on different classes of road and to help identify equity distortions between user groups. The paper also discusses research needs related to the collection and integration of GPS data from multiple sources for model calibration and program evaluation.

Flexibility and Time Dependence in Activity Scheduling Models

Activity scheduling models describe how people build daily activity schedules, given the opportunities and constraints they face. Many current models fail to adequately account for interdependence of these opportunities and constraints over time. This limits their ability to model aspects of behavior such as routine patterns, the desire for flexibility, and responses to urgent needs. Time dependence issues affect user responses to many transportation policies, including ridesharing incentives, flex-time, and paratransit strategies. Time dependence can be better captured by conceptualizing the activity scheduling process as a regulation and control process, the objective of which is to obtain an activity program that is both feasible and personally optimal. Activity schedules evolve over time as a result of regulatory action taken in response to the arrival of disturbances. An example is provided to illustrate the application of these concepts to the activity scheduling process. While it can incorporate useful ideas previously forwarded by researchers, control theory provides a framework for further theoretical and empirical development.

POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF NEXT-DAY RESERVATION POLICIES ON USERS OF AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT PARATRANSIT SYSTEMS

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 significantly improved the mobility of physically disabled persons. However, one component of the ADA regulation has potentially adverse effects on users—namely, reservation policies. ADA allows operators to restrict paratransit trips to those reserved 1 day or more in advance. The effects of next-day reservation policies are addressed with regard to the number and types of potentially affected activities and users. The research sought a basic understanding of the fundamental behavior of activity planning, using qualitative and quantitative approaches. An exploratory study was conducted to identify the factors affecting the amount of advance planning—or planning lead time—people take before engaging in activities and travel. An empirical model was calibrated on a unique data set from Windham, Connecticut. The model confirmed that longer lead times are associated with certain activity types, as well as the travel needs and personal characteristics of the activity participant. The model was applied to a pre-ADA sample of disabled persons from the San Francisco Bay Area to estimate the effects of a next-day reservation policy on their current activity behavior. The results show that only a small fraction of activities and users are likely to be negatively affected, because of the tendency of this population to plan many activities long in advance for other reasons. However, the constraints imposed on those who are affected may be severe because these persons include the least mobile part of the population and have the greatest need for short-notice transport, for instance, in requiring urgent medical care.

Simulating Land Use Development Through a Stochastic Allocation Procedure in Johannesburg, South Africa

This paper describes a method of forecasting demographic and economic change at a spatially disaggregate level that is compatible with the requirements of a conventional transport model. The method was developed and tested in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of a scenario-planning exercise to assess potential land use and transport interventions. The procedure does not model land use development decisions explicitly but uses a geographic information system-based multi-criteria analysis approach incorporating the factors influencing the development of residential and nonresidential land uses, the constraints of land availability, and the guiding effects of government policy. Allocation occurs in discrete time steps, allowing the dynamic evolution of outcomes to be modeled in a nonequilibrium framework. It operates in connected mode with the transport model, taking accessibility changes as input into subsequent land use allocations. Monte Carlo simulation is used to approximate randomness in ...