City of Cape Town publishes its Travel Demand Management Strategy

[Luis]

Big parking fee increases, dedicated taxi lanes, and a carpooling database in Cape Town

The City of Cape Town has published its Travel Demand Management (TDM) strategy, which aims to reduce congestion in the metro by changing commuter behaviour.

Cape Town's traffic headaches have recently intensified. With commuters stuck in traffic for around 94 hours a year, the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard ranked it the 6th most congested city globally.

 

[GrootVoet]

This is not going to go down well.

 

[Zellephant]

Moving parking out of the CBD is basically just common sense, combined with good, reliable bus/tram network. Cars have no business in a CBD. This is all good and well.

Everything else in their plan sound like some Orwellian nightmare (or wet dream if you are a socialist).

City backed ride sharing platform - Uhm, no thanks.

Registered car pooling - Uhm, no thanks, I am not registering my movements and travel plans with the government. It really is none of their business.

 

[ld13]

The city is reviewing and increasing public parking tariffs to what it deems to be true commercial market values.

It said that setting rates dynamically to target a 15% vacancy rate would ensure bays were regularly turned over, reducing traffic from drivers circling for parking.

Hey chatgpt, we need an excuse to increase the fees... write us a public statement with a positive spin on everything,

 

[Gordon_R]

Edit: How old is this article? There is no date in the document later than 2018. Google shows a comment period for a new Draft Policy in late 2025:

Citizen engagement platform

The irony is real! For decades now, there are no longer any businesses in the CT Central Business District...

Kenilworth Center has recently introduced paid parking (which I find irritating), but the fee is R10 for the first 4 hours. So I'm not sure what the CoCT are going to use as market rates...

 

[Zellephant]

For a city like Cape Town, that already has a decent BRT system, they should just ramp up the number of small busses, and increase the parking rates in the CBD to something stupid, like R150.00 an hour, and make the care zone (foreshore) completely car free (except for scheduled deliveries and emergency services).

The rest will sort itself out. Maybe they can even bring the trams back.

Oh, and then incentivise the private sector to build some big, multi story car parks with some dirt cheap 25/50 year leases on un or underutilised city land at key entry points into the city.

Anything else is just further exploitation and Orwellian style control nonsense that should not be tolerated

 

[Koos Custodiet]

Cheaper than finishing the unfinished bridges I guess...

 

[Zellephant]

The irony is real! For decades now, there are no longer any businesses in the CT Central Business District...

I mean, I guess your right, as long as you ignore the fact that the CBD is second only to Sandton on the entire African continent when it comes to corporate office presence, and that the area makes up more then 40% of the corporate office space of the entire metro.

I mean sure, there are no businesses left, except for:

FirstRand
Investec
Standard Bank
Ninety One
Allan Gray
Sygnia
Momentum
Coronation
MSC
Truworth group HQ
TFG group headquarters
Woolworths head office
Clicks Group HQ
Naspers
Media 24
Takealot
Luno
Yoco
ENS
WebberWentzel
Delloitte
KPMG
PWC
British American Tobbaco
Amazon Africa HQ
Raddison Hotel Group Africa HQ
Wessgro

To name but a few - and that also doesn’t take into consideration all the actual retail businesses, the industrial businesses in Woodstock, the harbour itself etc etc etc….

 

[Pythonista]

Well .... I guess the City Council can lead the way by offering its own staff those work-from-home and flexible time benefits.

 

[Gordon_R]

I mean, I guess your right, as long as you ignore the fact that the CBD is second only to Sandton on the entire African continent when it comes to corporate office presence, and that the area makes up more then 40% of the corporate office space of the entire metro.

I mean sure, there are no businesses left, except for:

FirstRand
Investec
Standard Bank
Ninety One
Allan Gray
Sygnia
Momentum
Coronation
MSC
Truworth group HQ
TFG group headquarters
Woolworths head office
Clicks Group HQ
Naspers
Media 24
Takealot
Luno
Yoco
ENS
WebberWentzel
Delloitte
KPMG
PWC
British American Tobbaco
Amazon Africa HQ
Raddison Hotel Group Africa HQ
Wessgro

To name but a few - and that also doesn’t take into consideration all the actual retail businesses, the industrial businesses in Woodstock, the harbour itself etc etc etc….

Valid point, but I think you are stretching the definition of CBD. Some examples: Amazon Africa HQ is at the River Club in Mowbray, Sygnia is in Green Point, and Radisson is at the V&A Waterfront. In any case, members of the public rarely drive into any CBD to visit those places you list. Mini CBDs like Claremont and Bellville are a whole other story.

 

[FiestaST]

What I have seen in the all my (many) months of balls deep job scouting is Century City's prevalence. The ambition way back in the day (early 00's) was that CC was planned to be a CBD of sorts & it is!

You may not think of it offhand but a proper stack of Fintech companies are based in CC.

 

[Zellephant]

Well .... I guess the City Council can lead the way by offering its own staff those work-from-home and flexible time benefits.

As far as I know, most of their management type roles at work from home these days. My neighbours in Stellenbosch both work for CoCT in the planning department, and they only go into the office a few days a month for critical meetings

Valid point, but I think you are stretching the definition of CBD. Some examples: Amazon Africa HQ is at the River Club in Mowbray, Sygnia is in Green Point, and Radisson is at the V&A Waterfront. In any case, members of the public rarely drive into any CBD to visit those places you list. Mini CBDs like Claremont and Bellville are a whole other story.

What then do you attribute the insane levels of traffic flowing into and out of the CBD every weekday?

Also, interesting you say I am stretching the definition of CBD. What would you consider the Cape Town CBD? In my mind its pretty much everything from parliament to the harbour, including the foreshore and waterfront

 

[Randomwasavailable]

The "solutions" look like AI's work.

 

[Randomwasavailable]

I mean, I guess your right, as long as you ignore the fact that the CBD is second only to Sandton on the entire African continent when it comes to corporate office presence, and that the area makes up more then 40% of the corporate office space of the entire metro.

I mean sure, there are no businesses left, except for:

FirstRand
Investec
Standard Bank
Ninety One
Allan Gray
Sygnia
Momentum
Coronation
MSC
Truworth group HQ
TFG group headquarters
Woolworths head office
Clicks Group HQ
Naspers
Media 24
Takealot
Luno
Yoco
ENS
WebberWentzel
Delloitte
KPMG
PWC
British American Tobbaco
Amazon Africa HQ
Raddison Hotel Group Africa HQ
Wessgro

To name but a few - and that also doesn’t take into consideration all the actual retail businesses, the industrial businesses in Woodstock, the harbour itself etc etc etc….

Basically, a ghost town then.

 

[Randomwasavailable]

Fight, fight, fight.

 

[richjdavies]

It would be all about the rail if they controlled the rail...

Got to agree with others in asking -- who are all these people on the road every morning?!

 

[Zellephant]

Basically, a ghost town then.

I mean, are you suggesting the traffic on the N1, N2, N7, R27, M5, M3, etc every morning and every afternoon isn't real? Because when I do have the misfortune of needing to head into town before 09:30 on weekedays, the traffic is pretty real, and it all seems to be converging onto the CBD.

 

[Zellephant]

It would be all about the rail if they controlled the rail...

Got to agree with others in asking -- who are all these people on the road every morning?!

Rail is all good - but that only deals with getting commuters into and out of the city - other solutions are still needed to get them moved around the City. But I dont agree that needs to be done with city controlled ridesharing apps or registered carpools. A tram network would be a great addition though - but that seems missing from these commies plans.

 

[Gordon_R]

As far as I know, most of their management type roles at work from home these days. My neighbours in Stellenbosch both work for CoCT in the planning department, and they only go into the office a few days a month for critical meetings

What then do you attribute the insane levels of traffic flowing into and out of the CBD every weekday?

Also, interesting you say I am stretching the definition of CBD. What would you consider the Cape Town CBD? In my mind its pretty much everything from parliament to the harbour, including the foreshore and waterfront

Both valid points. Cape Town is a victim of geography, squeezed between the mountain and the sea. The bottom line is that there are only 3 major arteries into the City Bowl (N1, N2, M3), and anything more than 5,000 vehicles per hour causes gridlock. Same with Koeberg Interchange, leading from the Southern to Northern Suburbs. Trying to stem this influx is like trying to keep back a rising tide, requiring drastic (and perhaps unconstitutional) measures.

Some rough numbers: https://iol.co.za/news/south-africa...-7000-vehicles-recorded-on-highways-per-hour/

A useful overview in this article: https://capetowndata.com/en/products/blogpost/643/

I mean, are you suggesting the traffic on the N1, N2, N7, R27, M5, M3, etc every morning and every afternoon isn't real? Because when I do have the misfortune of needing to head into town before 09:30 on weekedays, the traffic is pretty real, and it all seems to be converging onto the CBD.

I think what was meant was that outside rush hour, there are very few vehicles driving around in the CBD, and very few pedestrians.

 

[Zellephant]

Both valid points. Cape Town is a victim of geography, squeezed between the mountain and the sea. The bottom line is that there are only 3 major arteries into the City Bowl (N1, N2, M3), and anything more than 5,000 vehicles per hour causes gridlock. Same with Koeberg Interchange, leading from the Southern to Northern Suburbs. Trying to stem this influx is like trying to keep back a rising tide, requiring drastic (and perhaps unconstitutional) measures.

Some rough numbers: https://iol.co.za/news/south-africa...-7000-vehicles-recorded-on-highways-per-hour/

A useful overview in this article: https://capetowndata.com/en/products/blogpost/643/

The geography does cause a significant bottleneck - but many European cities have managed to deal with this, and create virtually car-free city centres - while maintaining massive numbers of daily workforce commuters flowing in and out.