An assessment of the condition of South Africa's transport fixed infrastructure

Abstract

The purpose of the “report cards” of the condition of engineering infrastructure in South Africa, the product of cooperation between the CSIR and SAICE, have been to draw the attention of government, and of the public at large, to the importance of maintenance, and to factors underlying the state of repair of infrastructure. The success of these report cards, published in 2006 and 2011, has been such that the CSIR and SAICE are again working together to prepare a new report card, to appear later this year. Of the 10 infrastructure sectors assessed in the previous report cards (and which are again being assessed in the third), no less than four concern public transport fixed infrastructure, viz roads, airports, ports and rail. Whereas completion of the third report card will not take place until mid-2017, the objective of this paper is, after a brief description of the background to and purpose of infrastructure report cards and the process by which the South African report cards are compiled, to discuss key findings of the previous report cards – and also preliminary findings of the current work on the third report card – all with a particular focus on the transport sector.