Author(s)

Okezie Ifeanyi Washington, Das Dillip Kumar & Akombelwa Mulemwa

Abstract

Accessibility to public transportation system is a major concern in the cities of South Africa. The existing public transportation route network system offers poor accessibility from the residential areas to the public bus transportation nodes (bus stops/ranks) and vice versa in the cities of South Africa. Therefore, using the existing public bus transportation system in Durban, the objective of the study was to make a public transportation route network analysis to examine the accessibility of different areas in terms of walking distance and time to the public bus transportation network. A remote sensing-premised geographic information system method was used for the study. Findings suggested that different areas of the city are located at a distance between 0.5 km (0.31 mi) and 15 km (9.32 mi) from the public transport route networks. The inner-city areas including the central business districts that are located between 0.5 (0.31 mi) and 1.0 km (0.62 mi) are relatively more accessible in which people take a little above 8 minutes to a little above 16 minutes to reach a public transportation node. However, the areas located at a distance more than 15 km (9.32 mi) are highly inaccessible, and it takes more than 4 hours of walking to reach a node (bus stops). The study evidenced the current accessibility challenges in the public transport system in Durban, and the findings could assist in upgrading or re-configuring the route network system to make it more accessible.

Keywords

GIS, Remote Sensing, Spatial Network Analysis, and Transportation accessibility