With the absence of a reliable and functional rail system and growing congestion on the city's roads, the need for an integrated public transport network, putting safe cycling at the heart of it, has been relaunched.
A cycling initiative by the Active Mobility Forum saw a group of cyclists riding from Langa through Athlone, Rondebosch and Woodstock to the Cape Town CBD on Friday to highlight the need for infrastructure that enabled safe cycling and an inclusive transport system across the city.
The forum is a partnership with the bicycle mayor Sindile Mavundla, Young Urbanists South Africa, Langa Bicycle Hub, Fixie Fit SA and others.
The forum believes that although the City had made strides in promoting cycling and introducing infrastructure, albeit in a sporadic and ad-hoc manner, more investments should be made.
"Currently, most road infrastructure, including past, present and being planned, still favours private transportation. The country needs a big shift that will see our cities and towns make walking, cycling, e-scooting, skateboarding or taking public transportation a safe and viable alternative," urged the forum.
UCT’s Professor Marianne Vanderschuren, an expert on public and non-motorised transport, called for a conducive cycling network that connected all parts of the city to the CBD.
Vanderschuren said there was an urgent need to get the cycling network going in a coordinated manner, starting with the CBD and the important corridors.
Studies conducted in Cape Town showed that cycling infrastructure did not yield more use and or an improvement on road safety.
"At the moment we are not doing it in a way that is conducive to cycling. Cycling offers opportunities for people who are currently marginalised in the city to be more able to access economic opportunities, get to school easier.
"We've done studies that showed that two months of using taxi money to get to work is the equivalent of buying a second-hand bicycle, but that requires the City to provide the infrastructure to keep cyclists safe. And that's not happening," said Vanderschuren.
Following the failure of rail, the majority of Cape Town's daily commuters use private transport, minibus taxis and buses, while a small number rely on non-motorised transport.
However, co-ordinator for Young Urbanists and co-ordinator of the Active Mobility Forum, Roland Postma said most people did not own cars.
"If we wanted to, we should now engineer our infrastructure to allow our children to walk and cycle in safe streets.
“If every neighbourhood is safe for our children to walk and cycle we will have transformed our cities and towns, and addressed apartheid spatial planning and the car-centric sprawls, malls and estates,” said Postma.
While there's been greater calls for the use of electric cars, Postma said: “We support the electrification of our transport network, but if we replace petrol cars with electric cars, we will still have the same boring and endless strip of malls, urban sprawl and sea of concrete that gives the younger generation no hope.
“We want cities and towns that are exciting, safe and walkable," he added.
Mavundla said Cape Town could be made a cycling and liveable city.
"We are working together with politicians to see what can be improved on cycling infrastructure and create opportunities for women and girls to be able to learn how to ride bicycles and use them in a safe environment.
"This ride highlighted the lack of safety for cyclists. We literally rode alongside cars and some drivers were not considerate. One of the riders described it as a ‘death trap’. There's more that needs to be done,“ said Mavundla.
According to Mavundla, immediate measures that could be implemented include:
* Installing barriers on bicycle lanes
* A drop in the price of bicycles
* A connected and safe cycling route between Langa and the CBD
* Potected cycling lanes on busy roads and ensuring equal recognition of non-motorised transport on arterial routes.
Urban Mobility MEC, Ricardo Mckenzie welcomed the initiative and pledged to work together with the City mayor to make cycling safer.
"We have tens of thousands of cyclists in the city and if they feel that it's unsafe for them on the roads, we have to do something about that, not only in the metro, but in the rest of the province.
"We can do it, we just need to make sure that cycling is safer, and that people feel it's safer,“ said Mckenzie.
Active Mobility Forum's " Friday City Cycle" events will be held on the first and last Friday of the month.
Weekend Argus