Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
12
nations in Africa, has also produced transport plans (MoWT, 2008). The situation in Uganda will
be one of the case studies because it is undergoing a Mid Term Review prior to preparing a new
plan to 2040. It is to be expected that contemporary transport policies will be prominent in
driving the plans.
2.2.2. Political and Legislation Factors Outside OIC Geography
For countries outside the OIC geography, there is an abundance of examples of transport and
infrastructure investment planning from which current practices can be observed. South Africa
provides one of the best examples of a comprehensive process that considers all the issues (DoT,
2011). Its executive summary sets out the achievement of the national plan and is synthesized
in the text box below.
South Africa National Transport Master Plan 2050
The South Africa National Transport Master Plan 2050: 1. is well planned, integrated and aligned
across sectors; 2. is responsive to growing passenger and freight customer needs; 3. supports an
inclusive spatial vision; 4. is well maintained and preserved and further developed to
address/overcome developmental challenges; 5. supports economic competitiveness through
seamless multimodal trade corridors; 6. offers safe, affordable and accessible modal options for
passengers; 7. preserves the environment; 8. is managed by strong institutions; 9. is supported
through effective policy and regulation; 10. is innovative/adaptive and reflects emerging
priorities; 11. is sustainably funded; 12. is effectively implemented through accountable delivery
mechanisms.
This set of 12 criteria might well be instructive for other countries and one might only add those
aspects that relate to technology sustainable development and climate change.
Many plans appreciate the importance of integrated land use and transport plans, typically for
Urban Areas (Nairobi City Council, 2014). Naturally North America has many examples, noting
that they tend to be city focused (CMAP, 2005, Edmonton, 2009). In Australia planning horizons
can be as long as 40 years (New South Wales, 2017), while infrastructure investments are for 5
years in New Zealand (NZ-Transport Agency, 2018). Colombia, where significant investment in
public transport has taken place aligned to the policy of reducing climate change (Climate
Investment Funds, 2010) as well as in Europe (Transport for Ireland, 2015) provide numerous
examples of transport planning good practice.
IFIs insist on there being a transport master plan and even a policy in place before they consider
funding projects and helpfully provide guidelines on how to evaluate the transport projects that
they fund such as the World Bank (Mackie, 2005), the African Development Bank (AfDB, 2014),
and the Asian Development Bank (ADB, 2017b). Failures in planning invariably have arisen, not
because the content of the plan was weak, but the processes and resources to implement them
were either missing or lacking in capacity. Without rather strict procedure that require the
application of master plan content such as objectives and outcome and the monitoring thereof,
the risk of failure is high. The linkages between project development and evaluation with policy
and objectives is brought out by the European Commission (2014) that advocates the
application of continuity to the planning process. In other words, a policy objective in the master
plan becomes the programme objective for the plan without any changes in wording. The