South Africa’s GHGs are road freight-heavy

According to Deputy Minister of Transport Jeremy Cronin, who addressed a plenary session at the South African Transport Conference on 11 July 2011, South Africa’s transport-related greenhouse gas emissions profile shows a poor modal mix of rail versus road, aviation versus maritime, cars versus public transport, minibuses versus mass carriers, and non-motorised transport versus motorised transport, with problematic socio-economic geography (distance to markets) and urban sprawl in South Africa and its metropolitan areas being among the most scarcely populated in the world.

He said energy was the largest – with transport following at second – generator of carbon emissions in South Africa. He added that the reduction of carbon missions in transport should not be seen as a standalone objective. Neither was it merely a technical task of compliance with international goals.

“It is part of an integral component of placing our society onto a new, sustainable and more equitable development (growth) path,” Cronin said, adding that this could be achieved in transport “by way of championing modal shifts, championing public transport and transforming the country’s urban and regional geography”.

He explained that up to 1988, when the Transport Deregulation Act came into play and liberalised road freight, SATS (Transnet) had spent R2 billion per annum on fixed assets. This number dropped to R669 million in 1988 and R500m by 2000.

By 2008, its market share was down to 23%, but this was at less than 10% of total cost and, if distance (tonnes per kilometre) was added, this translated into 39% of effort at 10% of the cost.

Urban sprawl and the lack of natural constraints to suburban sprawl (e.g. Johannesburg), white car ownership freeway building in the 1960s and segregated dormitories had underpinned urban sprawl.

This sprawling was perpetuated with the advent of commercial farming, which saw one million farm evictions, continued crisis in subsistence farming in former Bantustans and rural regions, the location of 3.1 million Rural Development Programme homes, poor planning capacity, weak administrative controls – all of which led to property speculation and ongoing infrastructure bias against public transport.

Despite subsidies of R3.2bn for the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa and R3.9bn for buses, the cost of transport for the poor remains high with families, who earn less than R500, spending 35% of their income on transport, families earning between R500 and R1 000 spending 23%, and families earning between R1 000 and R2 000 spending 14%; with many job seekers complaining that the cost of transport is too high.

Realising that the country had a spatial distribution suitable for middle-income families owning a car, but that it posed a heavy burden on poor people and the government, the government underwent a paradigm policy shift endorsed by a Concourt decision in June 2010, stating that the Development Facilitation Act was invalid.

The establishment of the National Planning Commission under Trevor Manuel, the minister in the Presidency: Planning Commission, and the Draft Land Use Management Bill, give “directive principles” to three government sectors – aimed at promoting compact, sustainable settlements, discouraging urban sprawl and promoting residence/workplace proximity.

 Udo Rypstra