The Search for Sustainable Transport Infrastructure in Harare: Integrating Intelligent Transport Systems

This chapter seeks to unravel scopes of intelligent transport systems (ITS) in urban areas and proffer the challenges of and prospects for integrating ITS in the management of road transport infrastructure as a way of examining sustainable transport infrastructure, achieving transportation objectives and lastly giving policy recommendations on the management of traffic and its infrastructure through ITS. The study is purely qualitative in nature and will use qualitative methodology. Overall, developing countries have been battling with the cost of providing appropriate and sustainable road infrastructure in search of mitigating severe transport disorders such as congestion, grid locks and environmental challenges. However, the quest for sustainable transport infrastructure and achieving safety and convenience objectives remain rhetorical in modern day cities, although sustainable urban transport provision is one of the aims of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Other sectors, such as the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, have already embraced the traits and tenets of intelligent systems (IS), especially in the wake of COVID-19. It is also important that the system is applied in the transport sector, where a chaotic transport situation is witnessed, especially in large urban areas. This chaotic situation is providing a headache in the management of traffic and its infrastructure, to an extent that city authorities have had to resort to manual methods of managing traffic such as deploying police officers at major intersections. It is an undeniable fact that the majority of people in urban areas rely heavily on public road transport such as the commuter bus that uses and abuses traffic infrastructure heavily. Various scopes of intelligent transport systems (ITS) will ease the management of traffic and its infrastructure, especially in metropolitan areas where transport disorders are now severe and becoming a menace. It is against this background that the integration of ITS in managing traffic and its infrastructure will be an alternative for sustainable transport infrastructure.