Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 2000-2015 (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
34 boxes
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Colleen McCaul was a highly regarded transport consultant whose work was central to the development of the post-apartheid public transport system. She was a recognized expert on the minibus taxi industry of South Africa, having authored “No Easy Ride: The Rise and Future of the Black Taxi Industry” (SAIRR, 1990). She was a specialist advisor to the National Taxi Task Team after 1994, and worked on drafting the National Land Transport Transition Act and the National Land Transport Act that together formed the backbone of South Africa’s new transport system.
She was best known as the project manager of Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system, the largest municipal infrastructure project in South African history. McCaul was recruited to Rea Vaya in early 2008, when Rea Vaya was in the process of being planned, and ran it until the launch of Phase 1b of the system in 2013. She subsequently worked for the National Department of Transport in its work on Rea Vaya and other BRTs, and—through the expertise she developed building Rea Vaya—was recruited to the reference committee for the international “BRT Standard” with worldwide influence.
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
This collection was made available by the generosity of Colleen McCaul’s life partner, Neil Hickson.
Content and structure area
Scope and content
McCaul was an extraordinary note-taker and filer of documents, and left a remarkably complete archive of the documents generated through her many projects. This includes reports, draft reports, presentations, meeting minutes, and correspondence. In many instances the documents are accompanied by her thorough personal notes. Altogether, this provides an unparalleled insight into the planning and implementation of Rea Vaya, and the many smaller projects she worked on including early bus reform projects for the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Provincial Government, reforms to national transport legislation, development of national BRT policy, other planned BRTs including those in Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay, and Ekurhuleni, and almost every pre-Rea Vaya transport policy of the City of Johannesburg. There is no more than a handful of people who were involved in so many aspects of Johannesburg’s post-apartheid transport system, and likely none who documented their work as thoroughly. This collection will be invaluable to scholars of Johannesburg, local government, bureaucracy, BRT, and urban transport policy.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
The collection was processed in the order in which it was received, mainly in lever arch files. The description were derived in part from the labels on most of the lever arch files.