The Emerging Importance of a Mobility Strategy for South African Cities with GoMetro as a Case-Study

Abstract

South Africa has an unsustainably high level of private vehicles and vehicle-kilometres, yet there is still no real visible shift to public transport in the urban areas. Public transport does not appear to be an attractive option for private vehicle users, as operations are perceived to be unreliable and not on-par with the experience of private vehicle users. Even when a mode is both comfortable and reliable, private vehicle users exhibit extreme inertia to transfer to public transport. At the same time that our transport systems are moving in unsustainable directions, there has been a significant adoption of mobile phones by the general populace. Tracking this proliferation of mobile devices has been an exponential improvement in the processing power, user experience and sensing abilities of mobile phones. We are starting to see transport systems being impacted by this massive increase in the collective processing power of a city. It is thus now worth considering a paradigm shift as to how public transport systems are configured to incorporate the potential that mobile phones and their mass adoption present to urban transport systems.“Mobility” is defined in this paper as the use of mobile technology in order to create an Informational Decision-Making Layer above the Hard Infrastructure of transport systems, as well as the Operational Layer of vehicles and operations. As part of this “Mobility” paradigm shift, the author has conceptualized, designed, developed, implemented and operates GoMetro, a large-scale mobile web-based public transport information system for Metrorail operations in South Africa. The paper the author would like to submit will seek to answer the following questions:•With the increase in mobile phone penetration, and the collective processing power of an urban environment – is it time to rethink the traditional transport model consisting of a Way and a Vehicle?•What is Mobility? And what is a Mobility Strategy?•How does Mobility compare to traditional communication channels?•How do commuters interact with their mobile devices while commuting?•Is there a Business Case for operators and agencies to implement a Mobility Strategy? If implemented, what are some lessons learnt from GoMetro?•What is the social benefit of Mobility to an urban transport system?