Urban Accelerator Bellville

Location: Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa
Project type: Integrated Concept design for 2nd Public Transport Hub of Cape Town
Year: 2017
Client: City of Cape Town
Consortium partners: VE-R, MOVE Mobility, BKVV

The City of Cape Town had pointed various locations in the urban fabric of the metropolis to become ‘catalytic projects’. These projects should help inclusive development forward at several areas. To find out whether this location could play such a role a series of workshops with city staff and various stakeholders had first of all answer the question: Could this opportunity area become an urban Accelerator?

The area of Bellville is one of the catalytic project locations. In this area the 2^nd largest train station in the Cape region is located. It sits besides the centre of the former old village which was connected via a long straight road (Voortrekker Road), and functioned as the intermediate stop from the city centre towards the Stellenbosch hills. Nowadays the Bellville area is fully emerged in the urban fabric. Still the potentials to grow as a strong second node of the metropolis has not been grasped fully. The teams analysis led to the conclusion that an integral vision for the area of which the Bellville station is the centre, is needed. In a series of ‘pressure cooker workshops’ with all professionals involved the contours of a Transit Oriented Development model appeared for Bellville. The position of the station is the perfect accelerator for all sides of the site and stretched over an area of influence much larger than the current CBD for instance.

The vast open and unused spaces around the station are typical for the Cape Town metropolis urban fabric. These need to be inversed and become the drivers of change for this area. Secondly the existing infrastructure needs to be used differently. Instead of investing in very expensive car infrastructure, which will contribute to only more car traffic, the train station needs to be more intensively connected to other mobility functions to create an efficient passenger transit hub. Therefore, a platform above the railway tracks is proposed which can be linked to the existing elevated expressway to accommodate taxis, buses and minibuses with a passenger concourse in the middle connecting the railway below with the other transport means on the sides of the platform. By bending the concourse to the ground floor levels a smooth connection to the existing old village centre can be made and the unused railway yards on the other side can be unlocked.

This Concept design for a masterplan process was welcomed positively by representatives of the City and PRASA (Rail authority of South Africa and owner of the station).

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