Track: Operations Management

Abstract

South African transportation still faces quite a few challenges despite the implementation of BRT systems across various metropolitan cities. These include, “lack of public transport accessibility in semi-urban areas, low ridership, equity imbalances and traffic congestion”. Observations have revealed that the BRT has not been effective in meeting all its objectives. This paper evaluates the strategic integrated transport growth and development in South Africa particularly focus on the City of Johannesburg based Rea Vaya. A qualitative research design using one-on-one semi-structured interviews was used for data collection. Twelve participants were purposefully selected, which included the commuters, drivers, cleaners, fare collectors, security officers, and managers who had been working or using the BRT transport system for not less than a year. Qualitative content analysis techniques were used for analysing the data and providing an audit trail; the writing of thick descriptions and a reflexive journal were used to attain research quality. The findings suggest that there is a high number of car ownership, overpopulation, large BRT lanes, road renovations and traffic light malfunctioning are responsible for traffic congestion in the City of Johannesburg. In spite of the introduction of BRT system that was developed to foster integrated transport particularly with an intention to encourage sustainable growth and development. Furthermore, findings revealed that the impact of the BRT transport system in the City of Johannesburg was positive in terms of saving travelling time, low-prices and creating job opportunities. While the negative impact is that the advent of BRT has led to the closure of small businesses that are located on the road. Poor service delivery, corruption, resistance by taxi drivers, disrespectful passengers, inadequate number of buses, and poor remuneration for the employees and interference by road users, were found to be the challenges of the BRT operational system.