Civil Engineering May 2022 | Vol 30 No 4

Civil Engineering May 2022 39 I t is clear that our inability to effec- tively deal with the dominant informal minibus taxi (MBT) mode of public transport, both as a complement to formal services and in its own right, has severely constrained our achievements to date. Initiatives aimed at the incremental improvement of MBT vehicle standards, rank infrastructure, service quality, and driver capabilities have undoubtedly helped. We also have a few examples of the use of dedicated road infrastructure for public transport. The bus and MBT lane on the N2 inbound in Cape Town carries almost ten times as many pas- sengers in the morning peak hour as a comparable general-purpose lane. This article argues that there is a case to be made for the much more widespread use of priority road space for MBTs, to leverage the already significant contribution that this mode is making to urban mobility. It has been suggested, for instance, that dedicated public transport lanes should be provided on Class 2 and 3 arterials, as many of these routes have the available road reserve and sufficient public transport volumes to justify such invest- ments. Key questions that arise include: Are there smaller-scale infrastructure interventions that might be captured as low-hanging fruit? How would these affect the rest of the road network? And how might MBT operators respond? Researchers at the Centre for Transport Development at the University of Pretoria have been using traffic ob- servation, simulation, and mathematical modelling approaches to examine such questions. We started by noting that MBT drivers already use road infrastructure in illegal ways to try to gain a travel time advantage in congested traffic. Transport Eng i neer i ng Lourens de Beer PhD Candidate University of Pretoria lourensrdb@gmail.com Prof. Christo Venter Pr Eng Centre for Transport Development Department of Civil Engineering University of Pretoria christo.venter@up.ac.za Simeon du Preez Pr Eng Civil and Traffic Engineer EPS Engineers simeondupreez@gmail.com Prof. Johan W. Joubert Centre for Transport Development Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering University of Pretoria johan.joubert@up.ac.za Could dedicated infrastructure boost minibus taxi performance ? Over the last 15 years South Africa has invested heavily in the upgrading of public transport. However, issues such as slow deployment, limited impacts, and financial underperformance of our budding Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems have raised questions about whether we should continue on the current path. (a) t = 0 s (b) t = 8 s (c) t = 10 s (d) t = 11 s (e) t = 14 s (f) t = 16 s Figure 1 Minibus taxi creating its own informal priority