A GIS Approach to Measuring Public Transport Travel Delay on Higher Order Roads in the City of Cape Town

Abstract. On a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of people in the City of Cape Town rely on road-based public transport as a means of commuting. A major factor that influences the passengers’ experience is the travel time to reach a desired destination. Due to various physical and operational factors, some sections of the road network experience high congestion and travel time delays during the morning and afternoon peak periods. Quantifying these delays, and the number of road-based public transport passengers exposed to the delay along a specific road section during a peak period allows informed decision-making and prioritisation. GIS and spatial data analysis are powerful tools to determine where and when such delays occur. Various spatial data sets exist that were jointly analysed to quantify the delay and the passenger volumes exposed to the delay on the city’s public transport network.