The Department of Transport (DoT) is in the process of developing the Multimodal Transport Planning and Coordination Act as well as the Transport Databank, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters said at the launch of Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA’s) latest National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), in Pretoria, last week.

The new legislation, she said, will enforce the filing of transport information and will make it easier to collect transport information for planning and decision-making.

She stated at the launch that the University of Johannesburg’s State of Transport Opinion Poll, which was conducted last year by the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, states that transport is the third-highest overall priority in South African society.

“Transport is higher on people’s minds, compared with housing, law and order and infra-structure, more so in rural areas and small cities,” said Peters.

She added that the top three transport issues in the country were public transport, the high accident rates on the roads and the cost of fuel. The poll also found that the outlook for the future was good, with 43% of South African’s thinking that transport in their local areas will improve in the next year and 57% believing it will improve within the next five years.

“Our transport infrastructure investments have changed our urban landscape. They have helped improve economic efficiency through the movement of goods and services and have positioned the country as an attractive destination for further investment,” Peters explained.

She further commented that transport infrastructure investments have raised investor confidence and contributed towards economic development.

Based on data from the NHTS, Peters said the DoT can properly plan and invest in the 19 700 km of high quality and well maintained national roads, spend R50-billion on rail infrastructure renewal programmes that cater for over 2.3-million passengers a day, roll out high speed rail and spend over R20-billion of airport infrastructure.

The NHTS, however, also revealed that the percentage of South African households that have access to a car increased from 22.9% in 2003 to 28.5% in 2013.

The NHTS for 2013 showed that, while taxis, as the most dominant mode of public transport, were used by 26.5% of workers, those who used private transport were still in the majority at 30.8%.

Peters noted that these figures were despite government’s call for people to make greater use of public transport and the introduction of new public transport initiatives, such as the Gautrain and various bus-rapid transit systems.

“The statistics released give us some insight on [these issues] and we need to work on that and determine what it is that could actually change the behaviour of South Africans,” she stated.

The Minister also called on the media to advocate the use of the Gautrain buses, in particular, stating that these were becoming “wasteful expenditure” of money that “could be deployed elsewhere”.