INTERMODAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT INFORMATION CALL CENTRE: THE CAPE TOWN EXPERIENCE

Cape Town, South Africa, with a population of 3 million, daily commuters numbering 950,000, and modal split of transport being 49% public transport, 44% private car, and 7% other is striving to increase its public transport ridership. In order to achieve this, a not-for-profit company called MODALINK to promote, coordinate and market public transport was created. South Africa has a 3-tier system of government: national, provincial and local. This fragmentation of authority has been identified as a major encumbrance in terms of general growth development, not to mention the development of an integrated transport plan. National legislation has been developed to address this situation by enabling the creation of a Transport Authority to, inter alia, rationalize approval processes. The act further requires public transport to revert from a deregulated system t one of regulated competition. Until the national legislation comes into operation, the challenge of local government is to endeavor to retain current levels of public transport ridership and do what it may to maintain the integrity of the public transport system. One of the problems identified by MODALINK was the dispersion of public transport information to the public. Because of the deregulated nature of public transport, operators tended to function on a dynamic scheduling system and the 3 major modes, train, bus and minibus, were operating independently. The fragmented lines of authority were also demonstrated by the governmental institutional functions, namely bus and train subsidized by national, train controlled by national, bus controlled by provincial, integrated coordinated transport plan responsibility of local. To overcome this problem, the City of Cape Town resolved to introduce a tool-free call centre. The centre developed a software system that incorporates all the details of scheduled public transport trips (namely, trip length, trip time, fare, etc., integrated with a geographic information system) which enables the system to provide callers with all relevant information for any trip inquiry from A to Z for all public transport modes.