Western Cape opts for public transport over new roads

Friday, 15 January 2010 08:29

For at least the next five years, the Western Cape will use the R14 billion allocated for new roads to develop public transport infrastructure, particularly in Cape Town.

Public Works and Transport MEC Robin Carlisle has said that public transport is the answer to the congestion on Cape Town's roads.

The money budgeted for the public transport project will be used in the rollout of bus rapid transit networks in Cape Town.

“We have decided that, by and large, we will not build roads any more - unless those roads are for the specific and sole purpose of public transport,” says Carlisle.

"If a new area develops, we may have to build a road to connect it, yes, but, by and large, the days of roads are over."

The key change in the short term will be cancelling planned extensions of Cape Town’s R300, which Carlisle said would have "mostly benefitted middle and upper middle class people driving alone in their motor cars" rather than the poor.

However Carlisle said expenditure on public transport would have positive knock-on effects for the province's economy.

"It is going to create jobs, to create economic growth, to be the principal vehicle for cutting across the old geographic divides of the apartheid city and the one thing that can pull this city together."