The Gauteng Transport Authority (GTA) is partnering with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to broaden its ability to gather data on the public transport sector in Gauteng.

This forms part of the authority’s endeavour to improve the use of public transport, as well as the quality thereof, and to grow the public transport industry.

GTA CEO Jack van der Merwe told Engineering News on the sidelines of the Smarter Mobility Summit Africa last week that a need had been identified to have active data on all the public transport operators in the country.

The minibus taxi industry will be prioritised, as this mode of transport is most prevalent in the province.

“The CSIR has developed a database where we could have taxi owners, drivers, their training, their identification photograph, their identification number [and vehicle specifics], and on what route they operate,” he says of the type of database the GTA intends to develop with the help of the CSIR.

To start off with, the project will focus on quality assurance of minibus taxi and scholar transport operators, before branching off into all other modes of public transport, such as Uber, Gautrain, Metrorail and bus services.

“. . . in the end we are going to have a database showing all public transport and what routes they operate,” Van der Merwe said.

Through a memorandum of understanding with the CSIR that was signed by the GTA and the CSIR on October 7, the GTA intends to determine public transport capacities in high-traffic areas to determine where it needs to issue Gauteng on the Move permits in instances of oversubscribed areas, and also where current public transport capacity is sufficient to meet demand.

As such, parties involved in growing the Gauteng on the Move project will conduct current public transport record counts on routes to help transport authorities enforce certain procedures, Van der Merwe pointed out.

“Once [transport operators] have gone through a certain set of criteria, we will award them a [Gauteng on the Move] sticker [to verify their compliance with certain quality and safety criteria],” explained Van der Merwe.

He said the Gauteng on the Move permit represents a standard to help transport users identify and be assured of quality service providers, similar to the Transport for London initiative in the UK, which enable commuters to plan routes using various permitted operators to travel between different sections of London.

Going forward, Van der Merwe intends to develop Gauteng on the Move to encompass all of Gauteng, with plans to introduce new mobile applications that will enable efficient and safe public transport network navigation to help commuters travel throughout the province using public transport.