EcoMobility Fest was a good investment, says Mayor Tau
06 November 2015
The EcoMobility World Festival, held in Sandton in October in a bid to encourage Johannesburg citizens to use non-motorised and public transport to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ease traffic congestion, was “a success” and a good investment.
This was said by Johannesburg Executive Mayor Councillor Parks Tau during a panel discussion before a live studio audience on CNBC television channel yesterday (Thursday November 5). Mayor Tau said that one of the most important outcomes of the festival was the conversation it generated, not only in Johannesburg but also in the rest of country.“Just having the conversation was very important for us and a number of people participated on various platforms,” Mayor Tau said, adding that Twitter “contributions were quite overwhelming in so many ways”.
He said the conversation centred on two critical issues – congestion and its economics costs in the city, and global warming. “The reality of congestion is not just about the discomfort of sitting in your car, it is the dead time that people literally spend in their cars. There is no productivity happening at that point, so the amount of minutes and hours people spend in their cars literally translates into non-productive time,” Mayor Tau said. “Literally, congestion comes at a cost. The amount of time people spend on the roads is an economic cost and we needed to talk about how to reduce congestion, particularly in an area as important as Sandton, the commercial heartland of not just South Africa but the continent.”
He said with an increase in population and occupancy levels, the City of Johannesburg anticipated traffic congestion in Sandton to increase by 3.5% per annum.
”The reality is that, unless we are able to do something on the demand side, which is to reduce the demands on the roads, we are going to [find ourselves in a big challenge] and we need to do something about it. The EcoMobility Festival was about achieving that … demonstrating that it is actually possible by introducing alternatives to reduce the pressure on our roads and creating convenience for people to access the different places they go to,” the Mayor said.
On global warming, Mayor Tau said the City was not going to sit and wait for world leaders to meet at COP21 in Paris to reach agreements on the issue later this year.
“We can’t wait for COP21; we have to [define] what our contribution is,” he said, adding that in many ways the EcoMobility Festival had been to demonstrate that.
“Ecomobility was about being the precursor to the future … In many ways, we’ve seen the future and we can confidently say that the investments that we’re making will enable us to achieve that future.”
He said the City was leading the way as it had already started a programme to turn its vehicles into green cars. “We’ve already started procuring electric cars for our own fleet. We don’t talk to people about things that we’re not doing. We talk about things that we’re implementing in practice. We’ve already started converting our buses into a dual fuel system. Metrobus is running on compressed mixture of gas and diesel hybrid system and we’re anticipating that by the end of next year it will be completely on biofuel,” he said.
He said he was impressed with the buy-in from Johannesburg citizens. “In my view, what we benefited was the ability of people to say: ‘Here’s something that needs to be done; here’s something that needs to be resolved. Let’s have a discussion.’ So, in many ways, people just didn’t say: ‘We have a problem pulling off this thing.’ People said: ‘We have problem, let’s find solutions during the festival … [or] let’s have solutions after the festival.’ So, the discussion didn’t stop there, the discussion is ongoing,” Mayor Tau said.