Oral presentation made to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport on the NationalLand Transport Bill, 30 July 2008
Peter Wilkinson
Centre for TransportStudies
University of Cape Town
Thank you for this opportunity to address the Portfolio Committee, which I am doing on behalf of my colleagues in the Centre for Transport Studies at the University of Cape Town.
I can be brief, as I wish simply to reiterate the main points made in our written submission, which was not itself intended to be a comprehensive response to the National Land Transport Bill (B51-2008) submitted to Parliament. Rather, we have sought to focus our attention on one particular issue or cluster of issues which we consider to be of primary importance.
First, we believe that– in the form in which it has been tabled here – the Bill could represent a significant step forward in efforts to overcome a key aspect of the institutional fragmentation which has bedevilled the development of more effective public transport systems in our major cities. This is reflected specificallyin its provisions concerning the devolution to the local level – inthe form of certain designated municipalities or transport authorities –ofa range of functions related to the planning, regulation and management of local or intra-urban public transport services. In this regard, we consider that the Bill can and should give due effect to a primary intention of the national land transport policy and strategy presently in place, as well as realising the principle of subsidiarity clearly embodied in the Constitution.
The Bill tabled here has qualified the very clear and unambiguous statement about this issue made in the version circulated for comment in Government Gazette No. 30928 on 1 April this year, whichread,in section 11(1):
As indicated by section 156(4) of the Constitution, the primary responsibility for the execution of land transport functions rests with the municipal sphere of government, which includes transport authorities that are established to undertake municipal transport functions.
In the tabled Bill, this section now indicates that:
Subject to section 156(4) of the Constitution, the Minister and the MECs may assign the primary responsibility for the execution of land transport functions to municipalities, which includes transport authorities that are established to undertake municipal transport functions.
While this is not aninsignificant amendment, we trust that it is not intended to preclude or unduly delay the assignment of the relevant functions to those municipalities which could be judged competent to undertake them.
Second, and further in this regard, we believe thatthe municipalities identified in section 1 of the Bill as ‘designated planning authorities’ are, in general, likely to have or be able to develop as much, or perhaps even more, capacity than the relevant provincial government departments to carry out the range of functions indicated in section31 (which include the functions specified for transport authorities in section 20). Moreover, we consider it essential that planning for integrated public transport networks, as it is presently carried out by the municipalities of the larger cities, should now be definitively linked to the installation, regulation and operational management of those networks, a number of aspects of which have until now been retained in the sphere of provincial government. We would contend that the integration of these functions within a single entity is an essential precondition for the delivery of more adequate public transport services.
While we are not in a position to assess systematically the capacity of individual municipalities or potential transport authorities to play this role effectively, we would expect that at least the metropolitan municipalities possess the necessary institutional resources to do so.We would suggest that – where this capacity may be in doubt or questioned in the case of an individual municipality – assessment of it should be undertaken by a body other than the relevant provincial government department, which may have a vested interest in retaining the functions in contention. Where a functional transport area extends across the established administrative boundaries of municipalities – as is the case in the Gautengmetropolitan conurbation – provision is made in the Bill to enable the formation of inter-municipal transport authorities, which would undoubtedly represent a substantially enhanced pool of the necessary resources. Again, in our view, this would preclude the need to retain the relevant functions in the provincial sphere.
Third, and finally, we would suggest that there is quite evidently an appropriate and vitally important role for provincial governments to play outside the major cities – the metropolitan and ‘aspirant metropolitan’ areas –whosemunicipalitieshave been identified as ‘designated planning authorities’. As laid down in the Bill, this would include the established functions of formulating provincial land transport frameworks and planning and regulating intercity public transport services, but also the function of assisting or carrying out the planning and regulation of public transport services within and between the smaller towns and their rural hinterlands where the necessary capacity is unlikely to exist.
It is our view that casting the respective roles of the authorities in the major cities and the provincial governments in this essentially complementary fashion could obviate what appears to have become, in some instances at least, a pattern of destructive competition between these entities to assume or to retain the relevant responsibilities.
Thank you.
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