The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality is a newly established metropolitan municipality in South Africa which comprises a mixture of well developed areas as well as areas that are severely disadvantaged in terms of infrastructure provision due to the previous political dispensation. It is a city in transition - a city being transformed into one that will provide for the needs of its entire people. The legacy of the past has resulted in a huge backlog in service provision in the disadvantage areas, including measures to improve traffic safety, particularly pedestrian safety. A major challenge to improve traffic and pedestrian safety is to identify hazardous locations in the disadvantaged areas where very limited information, such as accident and traffic statistics, are available (due to various reasons). Studies, however, identified the safety of pedestrians along major routes as a specific and major problem, particularly adjacent to informal settlements. This paper focuses on two main aspects, namely: 1. A procedure that was developed to identify and evaluate hazardous locations in developing areas where limited accident and traffic statistics are available; and 2. A case study that illustrates a number of very important issues in the improvement of road and pedestrian safety. Some of the major issues identified during the case study include the following: The importance of proper land use planning and development management along major routes; the application of first world technology in the problem identification and generation of solutions of the project; the importance of safety awareness and educational programmes as part of the solutions; and the value of knowledge within the communities (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E217780.
Abstract