Inferring commercial vehicle activities in Southern Africa

To address the underreporting of freight from a transport geography point of view, we present an exploratory paper of the time and spatial characteristics of disaggregated commercial vehicle activities. The activities were extracted from raw GPS data collected in South Africa over a sixmonth period for more than 30 000 commercial vehicles. The analysis of the activity chains provides useful characteristics such as activity and chain durations, number of activities per chain, and the spatial extent of the activity chains. We introduce metrics to measure commercial activities, and compare three main commercial centers in South Africa. Also, in response to the South African government’s intent to better understand freight movement at a detailed, non-macroeconomic level, this paper is significant as it provides a means to support government’s transport infrastructure investment decisions. Although the activity densities contradict some accepted expectations found in literature, it highlights some of the impacts of past political inequalities still evident in South Africa, again providing valuable inputs to policy making.