Transport Planning & Operations

The research program in transportation planning and operations is broadly focused in three areas:

• Travel behaviour research for developing countries
• Public transport – network and operational planning
• Access, mobility and exclusion

The use of new technologies and big data is a cross-cutting thread that runs across all three thematic areas.

Examples of recent work in these areas include:

Information behaviour of public transport users

As transport and digital technologies increasingly converge, new opportunities are emerging for providing better information to public transport users that will make their experience safer and more convenient. However many information products (like apps) are not based on a thorough understanding of how passengers need, search for, find, and use information. In this research we explore passenger needs through the lens of Information Behaviour. We also work with minibus-taxi users and partners in academia and the digital tech space to develop new techniques for providing information.

• "Towards the empowered commuter: Exploring information behaviour of informal public transport users". Southern African Transport Conference, 2023.

This video showcases our recent exploration of how we can understand and meet information needs in a co-designed manner with commuters in African cities.

The whole-trip approach to public transport

Public transport is about more than just a trip in a bus or minibus. The whole-trip approach emphasises the first/last mile (1LM) and connections between services. CTD research focuses on developing an understanding of passenger experiences and expectations on the whole journey, and develops methods to measure and monitor the quality of the 1LM and integration, for use by both transport professionals and communities.  The tools have been applied to both Gautrain and BRT systems in Gauteng and eThekwini (Durban).

• “Measuring the quality of the first/last mile connection to public transport”, Research in Transportation Economics, 2020.
• "The first/last mile connection to public transport". Chapter in: The Routledge Handbook of Public Transport, C Mulley, JD Nelson and S Ison (eds). Taylor and Francis.
• "Experiments in understanding passenger needs on the first and last mile of the public transport trip", Southern African Transport Conference, 2022.
• "Measuring the Service Quality at Multimodal Public Transport Interchanges: A Needs-Driven Approach", Transportation Research Record, 2022.
• "Is first mile behaviour similar to last mile behaviour? A case study on a rapid rail system in South Africa", Transportation Planning and Technology, 2025.

Integrating informal modes in multimodal public transport networks

A number of research projects are looking at ways of better integrating minibus-taxis into a citywide public transport network, by doing things such as building special lanes for taxis, or implementing a common fare payment system using smart cards, or planning for easy transfers between vehicles. Recent work has asked how we can improve such integration by better understanding how informal operators and passengers make decisions.

• "Pathways to integrating paratransit and formal public transport: Case studies from Tshwane, South Africa", Research in Transportation Economics, 2023.
• "Incorporating contracted minibus-taxis into transitional Integrated Public Transport Networks: The case of Rustenburg", Southern African Transport Conference, 2024.

New data collection methods allow us to understand better how passengers navigate through multimodal networks.

• "Studying Transfers in Informal Transport Networks Using Volunteered GPS Data", Travel Behaviour and Society, 2024

Computer models of optimised networks have shown that significant benefits can accrue to both passengers (in terms of faster trips) and operators (in terms of faster turnaround times) from reprioritising scarce road space towards public transport. Ongoing research is investigating the implications of rolling out priority lanes and infrastructure priority measures (such as queue jumping lanes) on a city-wide basis.

• "Priority infrastructure for minibus-taxis: An analytical model of potential benefits and impacts", Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, 2021
• "Mixing the Formal with the Informal in Shared Right-of-Way Systems: A Simulation-Based Case-study in Tshwane, South Africa", Case Studies on Transport Policy, 2022
• "The case for priority infrastructure: A quantification of the benefits to minibus-taxis using microsimulation". Southern African Transport Conference, 2024.

Advanced methods for collecting travel choice information using smartphones

Understanding route choice behaviour in congested, dense urban road environments is key to the development of traffic demand models, transport policy formulation and the estimation of willingness-to-pay measures such as the non-work related value of travel time. However collecting reliable driver route choice preference data is not straightforward. The CTD developed a smartphone-based application to collect self-validating route choice preference data from motorists. It combines revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) methods with the advantage of generating route alternatives based on real-time traffic conditions. For further information on RAPP-UP (Route Choice Application - University of Pretoria), see:

• "An Innovative Method to Collect Route Choice Preference Data using a Smartphone Application". Southern African Transport Conference, 2022.
• "Estimation of Discrete Choice Models for Route Choice from Data Collected using the RAPP-UP Smartphone Application". Southern African Transport Conference, 2023.