Transport Planning Research Toward Implementing SDG 11 in South Africa

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, while SDG Target 11.2 is to provide access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems for all, especially vulnerable groups. South Africa is still far from achieving SDG Target 11.2 considering its segregated past and current lack of effective policy implementation. While transport planning research has contributed on a normative level, the divide between research and practice also hinders policy implementation. The aim of this chapter is to review recent transport planning research endeavors in terms of achieving SDG Target 11.2 in a South African context, with a specific focus on the link between research, policy, and practice. A scoping review generated themes related to spatial justice, spatial integration, transport safety, and policy development. Recommendations include more careful policy formulation and monitoring processes, inclusive planning processes, and improving efficiency and integration in bus rapid transit, nonmotorized transport, and minibus taxis. Interactions throughout the research process between researchers and policymakers or practitioners that may have contributed to research being used to implement policy are limited. Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners need to collaborate from the outset to determine the research needed to inform policy and implementation and to cast such research within relevant theoretical or conceptual frameworks. All three role players also need to consider more participatory and action forms of research in which policymakers and practitioners interact with researchers throughout the research process to increase the likelihood of research being used to implement policy. This chapter contributes to SDG 11 by critically reviewing literature from the point of view of accelerating the implementation of sustainable transport systems to make cities and human settlements in South Africa inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.