The illustrated talk will attempt to capture the essence of the urban design, architecture, planning, transportation engineering, landscape architecture, street furniture, public spaces & street artwork in these three historically important cities/towns.
Ronald Mathieson Haiden Pr.Eng. APES // 2022 The Society of Architects Planners Engineers and Surveyors+ RSVP to info@apes-ct.co.za by Friday 09 September 2022 Born 1951 in Bloemfontein. Matriculated at Selborne College, East London in 1968. BSc in Civil Engineering, University of Cape Town in 1973 followed by an M Phil in Urban Design & Regional Planning, University of Edinburgh in 1980 and a Graduate Diploma Engineering (GDE) in Transport Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand in 1991. Registered as a Professional Engineer (1976) and has been a Member of SAICE since 1977. Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute from 1992 to 2008.
He has presented papers at many conferences and seminars as well as given lectures in transport engineering at universities. Ron Haiden was awarded the South African Institution of Civil Engineering Chairman’s Award for 2012 for outstanding service to the Transportation Engineering Profession. He was elected as a Fellow of the SAICE on 19 Nov 2014.
Ron worked in Cape Town & Port Elizabeth harbours from 1973 to 1978 including 18- month National Service in the Navy based in Simon’s Town. From late 1980 to late 1982 he worked as a Planning Engineer in the General Manager’s Office, SA Transport Services in Johannesburg, followed by 9 months as District Engineer, Reef Construction, South African Transport Services. Ron has always been passionate about applying his interdisciplinary professional education and vision to improve the quality and sustainability of urban life in collaboration with professionals from other built environment professions. He worked on all aspects of metropolitan scale transport project planning, project evaluation and design in the City of Cape Town and the CMC since July 1983, a municipal career of nearly 33 years. He was responsible for and/or was on steering committees for the seminal Highway Capacity Study, Guidelines for Road Access Management, the Road Toll Policy for CoCT, the Conceptual Design and Economic Evaluation of many road schemes including 30 km of BMT lanes, the new Green Point Circle and Granger Bay Boulevard, the Hospital Bend upgrade, the Koeberg Interchange upgrade, and the review of the Foreshore Freeway scheme completion of the inner viaducts to name but a few. Ron was also responsible, together with interdisciplinary consulting teams, for the conceptual design of over 50 Public Transport Interchanges in the City of Cape Town.
Ron was asked to lead the Integrated Rapid Transit Project together with international consultant, Dr Lloyd Wright, in August 2007. Since November 2007 Ron was largely dedicated to the planning, design and construction oversight of the MyCiTi Bus Rapid Transit Infrastructure. This project involved the creative inter-disciplinary co-operation between all the built environment professionals as well as BRT operational specialists and the various operators. The vision was to plan, design, implement and operate an Integrated Rapid Transit System that was car-competitive, efficient, operationally effective, environmentally sustainable, universally accessible, restored dignity to passengers and gave them a degree of delight but was also affordable to all income groups, allowed easy transfers, enjoyed a cost recovery percentage which performed well in comparison with international norms and reduced potential fare evasion to a minimum. It is smart and elegant and has contributed very positively towards improving urban design quality as well as built environment certainty, which has urban developers’ and property owners’ confidence and has increased property values. This confidence and transport/urban design quality has already resulted in some substantial new developments and increasing urban densities closer to the MyCiTi routes, stations and stops.
Since retiring from the City of Cape Town on 31 May 2016, Ron has worked on the large inter-disciplinary professional team led by MDA, which won the bid to redevelop the Cape Town Foreshore for housing and related land uses and complete the essential elements of the Foreshore Freeway without requiring any public funding. It is regrettable that this project has been cancelled, for the time being!