An Economically Sustainable Urban Public Transport Framework: System Dynamics Modelling Approach to Reduce Public Transport Liberalisation Impact in Harare City

Abstract

Public transportation plays a key role to socio-economic development of any nation. This service enhances people’s livelihood framework by facilitating mobility and accessibility to services. Moreover, there is clear global evidence that a well performing public transport is an important enabler of sustained economic prosperity. Rapid urbanization in developing countries has resulted in transport facilities and infrastructure failing to cope with demand resulting in congestion, movement delays, high travel costs, and construction of holding bays in order to decongest the city, which will contribute to an increased usage of nonrenewable energy. This prompts implementation of non-comprehensive strategies such as partial deregulation of transportation systems that caused further deterioration in economic sustainability. An economically sustainable transport system advocates for mobility, resource, and operational efficiency. This research focuses on developing a bus investment conceptual framework of a public transport system that improves mobility, resource, and operational efficiency to aid in sustaining of public transportation system for an unforeseeable future. With this in mind, a Harare bus investment system has been modelled as a policy framework model to evaluate its economic sustainability. This will help develop a long-term economically sustainable public transportation and reduce the overall impact of the earlier liberalisation of the transportation sector.