Online Reporter
The light rail system now moving forward needs to be integrated into a complete public transport system worthy of a great city.
The practical implementation of a respectable public transport system in Harare, built around a light rail backbone and integrated with decent bus services, has taken a major step forward with a serious investor now ready to move ahead, and the approval by the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency for the project.
The railway side will obviously need to be integrated with buses, both to take many commuters to rail stations and to serve the vast number of areas that will not be touched by the rail network, at least in its planned first five phases.
Government moves to have bus owners upgrade the bus fleet thus fit into the whole.
What will be crucial for the success of a single, properly run public transport system for Greater Harare, basically Harare Metropolitan Province and the newer urban areas being developed across its borders, will be to ensure it is more convenient and superior to using private transport.
Private car ownership in Zimbabwe is now at that crucial take-off point where, within a few years, a majority of urban dwellers will be able to afford a car.
The public transport network we have, built around kombis, has done sterling service in getting the majority around the city and its satellites and neighbours, but largely moving the worse off while the middle-income groups increasingly clog the roads with their private vehicles.
A glance at the huge rush-hour morning and evening traffic jams in the city centre and on most arterial corridors, these days invariably dual carriageways, shows just how overloaded the roads are with both private transport and the public transport fleet.
The dual carriageways have helped, but most road reserves do not allow further widening.
The Government action to build a lot more interchanges, with the giant Trabablas Interchange already commissioned and several more under construction, will remove choke points. But these measures still require something close to zero growth in road traffic within the metropolitan area.
The continued expansion of housing accelerates the trends already existing of far more vehicles on the roads.
So it will be critical that the new rail services and the dramatically upgraded bus services are matched by some decent planning and co-ordination to produce an integrated public transport system that will encourage most car owners to leave their cars at home and come to work by train and bus.
That in turn requires a quality upgrade, a significant one, over what the average kombi now offers to the average passenger.
The investor in the light rail network appears to appreciate this, considering that one of the five lines in the initial US$3 billion investment will run to the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport and another will terminate at the new city being built in Mount Hampden. While both those lines pass by lower-income and middle-income housing, the terminus points strongly imply that the carriage quality will be good enough for international tourists, visiting business people and Members of Parliament.
The old colonial divisions between suburbs are already being seriously eroded, and division into high-density lower-income suburbs and low-density middle-income and upper-income suburbs no longer applies, to loud anguish of those with large plots in the latter group faced with the relentless development of cluster housing.
But this rise in densification, if not in income equality, makes respectable public transport both more urgent and more viable.
In most European cities and a growing number of Asian cities, almost everyone goes to work by train or bus, and the rich, middlers and poor share the same system, although many rail companies offer a sort of premium, or first-class carriage, on trains to attract the better off.
It will also be important, as planning progresses, to ensure that the new railway stations on the light rail network have adequate secure parking, as growing numbers will drive to the station, use trains to get to and from work, and drive home, using their cars mainly for social purposes or shopping trips to supermarkets.
The stations will also need associated bus termini for the feeder buses.
And, of course, the whole system will need a proper central hub linking train services and bus services and making it easy for everyone to change trains and buses.
The only real area left is the huge railway reserve in the south-central part of Harare.
That must be redeveloped as this transport hub, incorporating intercity trains, commuter trains and buses.
That requires vast demolitions of parts the National Railways of Zimbabwe should move out of town and the cancellation of all those leases of rundown property, so the whole area can be redesigned and rebuilt as what a great capital city needs as its public transport hub.
So the light rail project is just a starting point, a vital one.
The present upgrading of the bus fleet is a starting point, again a vital one.
The road upgrades and interchanges are another starting point, again vital.
What is still in the air is how all the parts will be fitted together so we can all travel around a great modern capital city in a rapidly developing country.
