Environment and Planning A 2014, volume 46, pages 2654-2669

doi:10.1068/a140016p_____________________________________________________________________________

Learning through policy tourism: circulating bus rapid

transit from South America to South Africa

A strid W ood
Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP,
England; e-mail: astrid.wood.10@ucl.ac.uk
Received 12 January 2014; in revised form 29 April 2014

Abstract. Study tours, a form o f ‘policy tourism’ in which local actors travel elsewhere to
see best practice and meet with those in the exporting locality who implemented it, have
become a basic tenet for policy exchange. In the pursuit of these lessons, hundreds o f South
African public transport enthusiasts visited South America, particularly Bogota, to learn
o f its thriving bus rapid transit (BRT) network. This paper evaluates the influence o f these
exchanges on BRT circulation and adoption—what takes place while delegates are overseas
and how do these learning experiences influence the adoption and implementation of
circulated forms o f best practice? This paper reconnoiters these ‘mobility events’ and their
outcomes to demonstrate theoretically that they are a necessary informal infrastructure
through which best practice circulates: in particular, as a method for developing and
strengthening social bonds between delegates and with hosts—relationships integral to
policy adoption.

Keywords: bus rapid transit, policy tourism, South African urbanism, urban policy
mobilities

Circulating best practice through South African cities

South African planners and politicians constantly draw on ideas and experiences from
elsewhere to inform local practices. Approaches to growth management strategies, informal
settlement upgrading, and sustainability migrated from North America, Brazil, and Europe,
respectively, and were adopted in South African cities because of their ostensible success
elsewhere. Perhaps most significant to the future development of South African cities are
the improvements to transport and transit-oriented development drawn from Brazil and
Colombia, which began to percolate into the urban fabric almost immediately after democratic
dispensation through a plethora of study tours to see these successes and by hosting visitors
from these cities. One particularly reproducible project is bus rapid transport (BRT), a rapid
mode of urban public transport that combines the high quality and speed of a rail system with
the operating flexibility and low cost of a bus network.
“ You visit the other city and ride the bus, and the bus arrives according to a schedule and
doors open smoothly and it’s a totally different public transport experience to any one
you’ve ever had in this country and that is part of the appeal”,
explained one Johannesburg-based transport consultant, referring to his experiences on a study
tour to Bogota. Study tours have become a standard method through which South Africans
garner evidence from international contexts because they enable participants to leam directly
from those who implement the best practice. In the pursuit of these lessons, hundreds, if not
thousands, of South African political and technical leaders have been to South America to
learn of Curitiba’s innovative land-use planning, sustainability, and transport solutions, and
in the last decade hundreds of public transport enthusiasts visited Bogota to see its thriving
TransMilenio BRT.
Learning through policy tourism 2655

It is in this context o f toing-and-froing that the paper focuses on the central tenet o f study
tours in connecting those considering the best practice with those who have achieved success
through its implementation. By taking policy actors out of their local sociopolitical and
geographical context, these adventures overseas connect delegates with one another and with
their hosts, with the expectation that partakers will return home and mimic the best practice,
thereby forwarding the circulation o f best practice. This will be evident through this focus on
the bonds formed among South Africans while in South America, which are indispensable
for both the political and the practical aspects o f BRT adoption. This exploration o f policy
circulation reconnoiters these ‘mobility events’ and their outcomes to demonstrate that they
are a necessary informal infrastructure through which best practice circulates, in particular
as a method for strengthening social bonds between delegates and with hosts: relationships
integral to policy adoption.
In so doing, this discussion engages with narratives in the mobilities discourse, which
takes account o f the various ways in which movement occurs (Hannam et al, 2006; Sheller
and Urry, 2006), as well as the policy mobilities literature, which focuses on the way in
which knowledge circulates around the globe (McCann, 2011a; McCann and Ward, 2011).
The arguments apply learning debates (Campbell, 2012; McFarlane, 2011) to a discussion
o f the explosive growth o f BRT around the world (Hidalgo and Gutierrez, 2013; Marsden
et al, 2011), concentrating on one method o f policy circulation and transfer which has not yet
been sufficiently explored. The paper chronicles the individuals who traveled to Bogota, their
rationale for doing so, and the outcome o f their personal learning to understand the way in
which political maneuvering and power dynamics facilitate learning as well as to understand
the importance o f human subjectivity in policy circulation. This empirical focus gives way
to theoretical considerations o f the techniques through which policy tourism strengthens the
ties amongst delegates as well as between participants and hosts.
The evidence to support these contentions comes from nearly one hundred interviews
with South African and global policy actors involved with BRT implementation, many of
whom participated in study tours as either host or participant, sometimes both, as well as
reviews o f various internal documents recording the study tour, evaluating its merits and
impact on BRT adoption. The next section situates these arguments within the policy
mobilities literature, drawing on the new mobilities turn and tourism studies. Included here
is a consideration o f the most recent studies o f policy tourism and the influence o f these
visits on policy circulation processes. This leads into the empirical analysis, which explores
the various South African study tours to Bogota— focusing first on the visits by delegates
from the City o f Johannesburg in 2006 and 2007, and second, on the tours by representatives
o f the City o f Cape Town in 2007 and 2008— and their outcomes to demonstrate that they
are a necessary infrastructure through which best practice circulates and as a method for
strengthening social bonds between delegates and with hosts. The final empirical section
evaluates the role o f outsiders and their visits to adopting localities as another mobility
practice to indicate that physical travel overseas is not necessary per se, but it is rather the
enrichment o f local and international relationships that form as a result. The concluding
sections sum up the various claims stressing the importance o f study tours as a method for
establishing durable relationships between hosts and visitors as well as among delegates as
evidenced by the various bonds between the South African and Colombian governments and
between local South African political rivals.

Viewing policy tourism through a (policy) mobilities lens

Policy tourism, characterized by study tours, site visits, and other fact-finding trips,
including conferences and even consultancy, is a critical means o f circulating best practice
across divergent landscapes. Study tours, in particular— a common practice in which local
2656 A Wood

actors travel elsewhere to see innovation and meet with those in the exporting locality who
implemented it— have become a standard tool for policy exchange. Complex systems have
been developed in Bogota and Curitiba, amongst other places, to manage the throngs o f policy
tourists and the requisite set o f site visits and workbooks needed to promote themselves as
role models. A host o f influential international actors from public transport advocacy groups
and transnational consultants to philanthropic organizations and bus manufacturers lead and
finance these trips. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) based in
New York City and Embarq, the World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport
in Washington, DC are two o f the principal sponsors for transport-related visits to South
America (Wood, 2014a). There is criticism o f these hosts who are apt to depict the exemplary
projects in a particularly favorable light, often silencing the critics (Wolman, 1992) and thus
such forms o f learning are said to occur only within “ideologically prescribed parameters”
(Peck, 2011a, page 778) in which the participants see, and are shown, the successes divulged
previously in publications and talks.
Previous studies o f learning identify the importance o f travel— conference attendance
(Cook and Ward, 2012), study visits (Cook and Ward, 2011; Cook et al, 2014; Gonzalez,
2011) , and work-related journeys (Lamer and Laurie, 2010; McCann, 2011a)— with
insufficient theoretical conceptualization o f the implications o f these visits in the adoption of
circulated forms o f knowledge. Campbell’s (2012) identification o f the movement o f policy
officials between cities for purposes o f learning and knowledge exchange is one notable
exception. He aptly depicts the “clouds o f trust” formed through study tours as the “ties of
trusted links between and among key actors in the community” to illustrate the “threads
o f continuity” that sustain policy circulation over time (page 11). In his analysis o f the study
tours undertaken per year and by city, Campbell identifies transport as a substantive area
o f exchange. For McFarlane (2011) learning emerges through various voices, interests, and
expectations, translating and coordinating a multitude o f information across asymmetrical
power structures. Policy exchange is more complex than power elites networking at a
conference or workshops promoting international policy models; instead, knowledge, ideas,
and practice are ingrained within the documentation, deliberation, and discussions exchanged
between politicians, officials, and civil society that become the machinery for learning.
These exchanges are certainly nothing new, although perhaps their frequency has increased
in conjunction with modem communication and transport technologies (Wood, 2014b).
International exchanges facilitated much o f the innovation introduced into cities in the early
part o f the 20th century, including water, electricity, sewerage, and public transport. Saunier
(2001; 2002) documents the occurrence o f overseas visits between the US and Europe in
which politicians, engineers, and reformers spent months in boats and trains, working in their
hosts’ offices and even staying in hosts’ homes to modernize their cities (see also, Clarke,
2012) . Recently, Cook et al (2014) directed our attention towards the exchanges between
British and Soviet architects and planners in the 1950s to share principles o f modernism and
socialism in the fields o f housing and planning. Their study reveals that there is much to learn
from studying the way in which these exchanges shape, and are shaped by, the geographical
and political contexts in which they occur (see also Wood, 2014c).
The adoption o f BRT across South Africa represents a process o f policy circulation in
which localities adopt a successful innovation from elsewhere under the assumption that it
will be similarly effective locally. This focus on policy tourism is set within wider concerns
for the process whereby policies and practices are shared across political systems and the
subsequent utilization o f—or disregard for— innovation in importing localities. In a mobile
world, in which knowledge and best practice routinely move across jurisdictional boundaries,
similar art and creativity (Peck, 2005; 2011b), harm reduction (McCann, 2008; 2011b),
Learning through policy tourism 2657

planning and design (Guggenheim and Soderstrom, 2010; McCann, 2011a; Robinson, 2011),
urban governance (Cook, 2010; Didier et al, 2012; Peyroux et al, 2012; Ward, 2006; 2007;
2011), and welfare (Peck and Theodore, 2001; 2010; Theodore and Peck, 2000) policies and
programs seem to be replicating everywhere. These processes, which are sometimes referred
to as policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996; Peck, 2011a) or urban policy mobilities
(McCann, 2011a; McCann and Ward, 2011), have captured the imaginations o f scholars
in architecture, anthropology, public policy, and sociology. Recently, a growing body of
literature has emerged in geography and urban studies dedicated to reconceptualizing the
form and function o f this mobility (McCann, 2011a; McCann and Ward, 2011; McFarlane,
2011; Peck, 2011a), and it is within these discussions that 1 situate this exploration o f policy
tourism.
Study tours are defined not only by the physical movement between sites but also by
theoretical mobilities, which familiarize certain actors with particular sets o f experience and
bring select cities into conversation with one another. Another literature is needed to consider
what happens during the exchanges to make them so integral to policy adoption: the new
mobilities paradigm (Hannam et al, 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006) offers an opportunity to
theorize the processes through which some individuals are selected to partake and information
is exchanged, thereby binding particular sites o f intervention. Mobilities research overlaps
with tourism studies (Sheller and Urry, 2004), politics (Cresswell, 2006), transport geography
(Cresswell, 2010; Shaw and Hesse, 2010), and urban studies (Cresswell and Merriman,
2010). It considers the spatial mobility o f people and objects across material infrastructure
(Merriman, 2007; Sheller and Urry, 2000) as well as the circulation o f knowledge and capital
through informal infrastructure and governmentalities (McFarlane and Vasudevan, 2013).
It is not a matter o f privileging circulation, movement, or flows o f engineering matters and
efficiencies but o f understanding the discourses, practices, and infrastructures through which
power and its associated knowledge circulates— who partakes in study tours and who is
excluded?; what knowledge is exchanged and which experiences are suppressed?; and what
happens along the way?— that leads localities to adopt what is presented as proven successes
from elsewhere.
The tourism literature offers an additional diagnosis o f these processes in which local
officials call upon sites o f innovation (Sheller and Urry, 2004; Urry, 2002). What characterizes
these mobilities as a unique form o f learning or, conversely, in what ways is policy tourism
similar to, or distinct from, other forms o f tourism? In the same way that the holidaymaker
unwinds while away, the policy tourist views international best practice with open eyes. Those
policies which may seem impossible to implement back home are suddenly possible in what
McCann (2011a) describes as a “retreat-like” atmosphere. In reflecting on the characteristics
o f policy tourism, Gonzalez (2011, page 1400) identifies the same criticisms o f the tourism
trade when holidaymakers produce a “hierarchy o f cultural significance” (Gregory, 1999,
page 116) through which “some ‘sites’ get turned into ‘sights’ worth photographing, while
others are ignored or downplayed”. Other adverse features o f tourism include the ‘context
bias’— when something works only within its local context— and the ‘compatibility bias’—
when something only works alongside other things (Sheldon, 2004). Tourism studies employ
a variety o f ‘people impacts’ to study the interactions between tourists and host communities
occurring through tourists’ demand for services as well as the role o f the host in the provision
o f these services (Page, 1995). For this study it is important to realize that the exchanges
between tourist and host are a critical component o f analysis o f tourism but have yet to be
sufficiently unpacked within the mobilities literature.
The findings presented in this paper rest on two foundational studies o f policy tourism.
The first considers how urban regeneration models travel and mutate by considering the
2658 A Wood

influence o f Bilbao and Barcelona as hosts o f thousands o f study tours. Gonzalez (2011) goes
on to present an empirically grounded study o f what she calls ‘urban policy tourism’— the
various trips made to Bilbao and Barcelona by international policy makers and their influence
on the diffusion o f best-practice policy models. Her arguments add a critical contribution to
the policy mobilities field by suggesting that study tours are motivated not only by a desire
to see the innovation but that participants also often partake to legitimize policy decisions.
That suggestion is relevant in this study o f South African study tours: one Johannesburg-
based politician, for instance, confessed that more than being an opportunity for learning, the
study tour indicated the determination o f the city to pursue BRT. This is an important point
if we are to argue that policy tourism is a particular subset o f tourism, driven by learning and
even more by politics.
A second pivotal study by Cook and Ward (2011) offers insight into the methods and
systems by which adopting localities employ policy tourism back home. Their study converges
on the Manchester city officials pursuing knowledge o f Olympic and Commonwealth Games
projects, and specifically on the techniques by which previous host cities exploited these
opportunities to engage in broader economic development strategies. Officials visited cities
whose best practice in hosting mega-events had been broadcast around the world, such as Los
Angeles and Lillehammer; their meetings with officials as well as site visits to sports-related
infrastructure and associated regeneration sites were used to execute the redevelopment of
east Manchester. Such points offer an opportunity to consider the manner in which local
politics is used to convince (or subvert) particular actions and determinations taking place
elsewhere as a part o f learning and policy circulation processes.
In light o f these affirmations, this paper reevaluates the usefulness o f study tours in the
adoption practices o f six South African cities. This review situated these international exploits
within the relevant literature on policy mobilities, learning, mobilities, and tourism while
also reflecting on the political economy and historical attributes o f study tours. The paper
unites these literatures by considering the way in which study tours connect people both
within the adopting city and between the exporting and important jurisdictions. It adds new
dimensions by evaluating learning taking place across multiple sites, over several visits, and
through an array o f stakeholders, exposing the techniques through which power is distributed
and the relationships that form to explain how study tours facilitate the adoption o f circulated
forms o f knowledge. Unlike other learning methods, study tours provide a more nuanced
learning opportunity through which importing policy actors see the innovation but also hear
the challenges and failures o f the innovation. These international visits enable actors from the
same locality to interact outside their ordinary confines. For instance, Johannesburg-based
taxi operators, who had previously tried to kill one another, found commonality in Bogota.
When they returned the same operators who until that time had refused to work with the
city to improve public transport were interested in understanding how BRT could work in
Johannesburg. Similarly, while in South America certain taxi operators emerged as leaders
and decision makers, and when they returned to Cape Town some parlayed this newfound
trust into management positions in the new bus company. The upcoming empirical report
will also include a consideration for the way in which the visits from international experts to
potential adopters is an essential and understudied form o f policy tourism. These claims will
be demonstrated subsequently through a careful survey o f the experiences o f various South
African study tours to South America and later by considering the visits by South Americans
to South Africa.
Learning through policy tourism 2659

South African study tours to South America

In 2006 BRT fever swept through South Africa with six cities— Cape Town, eThekwini,
Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Rustenburg, and Tshwane— currently in various stages
o f planning and implementation: in August 2009, just three years after learning o f the Bogota
model o f BRT, Rea Vaya Phase 1A opened as the first full-feature BRT system on the African
continent; in May 2011 Cape Town’s MyCiTi Phase 1A became operational; in May 2012
eThekwini Council approved plans to proceed with the first three lines o f Go Durban!; and
in July 2012 the cascade continued with Rustenburg and Tshwane beginning construction
on Rustenburg Rapid Transit and A Re Yeng, respectively. These BRT systems are modeled
after the achievements o f those in Bogota, whose accomplishments have been touted as a
low-cost, high-capacity solution to the South African city’s urgent transport crisis. Not all
cities have had a simple, straightforward, experience however: since 2008 Nelson Mandela
Bay’s Integrated Public Transport System has been besieged by politics and poor planning
and, in spite o f considerable efforts, the project remains in a state o f postponement. The
process through which South African cities adopted BRT, which I label ‘BRT fever’, raises
several questions regarding the mobility o f knowledge: specifically how and why cities adopt
circulated best practice.
A defining feature o f BRT learning has been the study tour, in which officials from
one South African locality visit a site o f best practice in South America, to gain explicit
knowledge on constructing, financing, and operating BRT as well as tacit understanding o f
the political approaches to realizing formal public transport in South Africa. While the study
tour has become the hallmark feature o f policy learning across South African municipalities,
relatively few details o f the activities, interactions, dialogues, and experiences as well as
the outcomes upon returning to South Africa are acknowledged as a distinguishing feature
o f BRT adoption. The arguments that follow consider the dates, destinations, and durations
o f the various BRT-related visits taking place between 2006 and 2012 and the empirical
accounts that follow detail the outcomes o f the visits as they relate to the adoption o f BRT.
Since 2006 no fewer than six South African cities and their local policy actors have
taken part in at least one study tour usually to at least three South American cities (table 1).
Johannesburg was the first city to participate in a formal study tour to Bogota to learn about
BRT: first in August 2006 and once more in August 2007. Cape Town also travelled to South
America twice— once in December 2007 and again in December 2008. The first visit targeted
consultants to disseminate the technical details o f BRT to those most likely to build the
system in Cape Town. As with Johannesburg, Cape Town’s second visit was more political.
Once local South African systems had opened, South African cities visited one another—
Rustenburg for example, visited BRT systems in Cape Town and Johannesburg in November
2011 to see how BRT was implemented within South Africa instead o f travelling to Bogota.
National politicians also participated in study tours to South America: in 2008, as leader of
Parliamentary Committee for Transport, Jeremy Cronin organized a study tour to Bogota,
Buenos Aires, and Curitiba. In spite o f their staunch commitment to public transport in
general and BRT in particular, the National Department o f Transport never officially visited
South America.
A study o f South African policy tourism would be incomplete without a mention of
Curitiba, the mecca o f public transport innovation long before Bogota. The fashion then too
was to learn by viewing and so, for most part, learning from Curitiba took place through
a plethora o f study tours to see the best practice firsthand. A large number o f delegations
travelled to Curitiba in the 1990s, not necessarily to witness the city’s transport innovation
per se, but to observe Curitiba’s impressive land-use and sustainability practices. This South
African fascination with Curitiba and its best practices throughout the 1990s was described
2660 A Wood

Table 1. Details of South African municipal bus-rapid-transport-related study tours.

City Date Destination Participants Funders

Cape Town 1st visit: Guayaquil and political officials, city and
November- Quito, Ecuador; technical officials, delegates
December 2007 Bogota and and local
Pereira, Colombia; consultants
and Sao Paulo,
Brazil
2nd visit: Bogota and political officials city from
November- Pereira, Colombia and paratransit the Public
December 2008 representatives Transport and
Infrastructure
Systems Grants
(PTISG)

eThekwini February 2002 Bogota, Colombia political officials city

and paratransit
representatives

Johannesburg 1st visit: Guayaquil, political officials Institute for

23 August- Ecuador and and paratransit Transportation
1 September 2006 Bogota, Colombia representatives and
Development
Policy (ITDP)
and the city
2nd visit: Bogota and mayor and 20 taxi city from the
17-26 August 2007 Pereira, Colombia industry operators PTISG

Nelson Mandela 2007 Bogota, Colombia municipal 1TDP

Bay transport officials
and paratransit
operators

Rustenburg 1st visit: Cape Town and municipal city

November 2011 Johannesburg transport officials
and paratransit
operators
2nd visit: Curitiba, Brazil paratransit city from
Planned for 2014 and Bogota, operators PTISG
Colombia

Tshwane 27 February- Bogota, Colombia 15 city officials, city

11 March 2007 and Paris and technical staff
Rouen, France and paratransit
operators

as a “love affair”, one that had to be constantly attended to. Some naysayers argued that these
visits were just ‘politicking’, while others wondered if they were a mode o f bribery.
A report published by a South African consultancy chronicles some o f the frequent
criticisms o f the study tours to Curitiba. The writers are sensitive to the multiple, and perhaps
overlapping, visits in which delegations from the same city repeatedly visit the same location,
looking for the same information. Sometimes a visit is duplicated because reports were not
Learning through policy tourism 2661

filed on the preceding visit, which leads to another reproach regarding the careless chronicling
o f the trips. To some extent, such criticisms are valid, but there were certainly instances when
the observations from overseas were integral to reproducing these achievements back home.
The visits to Curitiba were instrumental, for instance, in helping South Africans prepare the
1996 White Paper on Transport. Not only was the learning from Curitiba necessary for
the composition o f the White Paper, it provided a framework for subsequent transport policy
in South Africa. Among the delegates was the first Director General o f Transport, whose visit
to Curitiba was instrumental in influencing his subsequent position towards public transport.
This excursion into the past demonstrates that even then success was measured not only in
terms o f the outcome but also in terms o f the social dynamics that surface while overseas.
Those who travelled to Curitiba bonded in becoming lifelong advocates o f sustainable
transport, collaborating in spite o f strong opposition to compose various frameworks and
legislation resembling the practices witnessed overseas; several o f these delegates also
influenced ongoing BRT adoption.
Not all delegates were as confident that these expensive adventures to Bogota were
essential to BRT adoption as evidenced in remarks in which some wondered how much was
actually learned on these trips. One participant explained,
“ I think virtually every person even tangentially involved in BRT has been to South
America on a study tour. So much money has been spent and so many people have been
on joyrides so I would be hesitant to recommend study tours.”
This skeptic reasons that delegates visit cities implementing BRT because the trip is free for
participants and thus he is concerned that money is wasted sending possibly uninterested
parties on “joyrides” all over the world. Perhaps the number o f BRT-related study tours has
been overstated. Evidence from interviews with almost one hundred BRT implementers
revealed that only 32% had been to Bogota, leaving the remaining 68% feeling marginalized;
almost all respondents who did not go to Bogota grumbled, “I must be the only one who
didn’t go ...”
The remainder o f the paper considers the extent to which these exploits are influential in
local policy making. It unravels the visits undertaken by South African political and technical
leaders to see and experience the pioneering BRT systems in Bogota and other South American
cities, explores the relationships that formed as a result, and evaluates the merits o f these
exchanges for South Africans in making the determination to adopt or reject BRT.
A spotlight on Johannesburg’s visits to South America
In August 2006 a team which included Mayoral Committee Member, Rehana Moosajee,
Executive Director for Transport, Bob Stanway, and Executive Director o f 2010, Sibongile
Mazibuko as well as representatives from the two local bus companies (Metrobus and
Putco) and the two largest minibus taxi associations (Johannesburg Regional Taxi Council
and Top Six Taxi Management) visited BRT systems in Bogota and Guayaquil. The two
taxi industry leaders as well as a full-time “tour guide”, Lloyd Wright, a world-renowned
expert in BRT, were sponsored by the ITDP. This initial visit was Tow key’—just a tiny
group o f internationals with an NGO. The group found their way around Bogota, met with a
few key technical individuals such as Edgar Enrique Sandoval, former managing director of
Bogota’s TransMilenio, and Dario Hidalgo, Director for Research and Practice at EMBARQ,
another NGO helping cities implement sustainable transport solutions, both o f whom have
practical experience building BRT, and because o f this initial meeting later worked directly
with Johannesburg in building Rea Vaya. While in Bogota, one participant remembers
thinking “this really has potential” because “we saw that their system worked so well”.
Upon returning to Johannesburg, the city approved, in principle, phase 1 o f a BRT project.
Subsequent tasks included a feasibility study to evaluate the possibility for upgrading the
2662 A Wood

existing Strategic Public Transport Network (SPTN) to full BRT, various engagements with
the National Department of Transport to finance the project, with the Johannesburg Roads
Agency and the Johannesburg Development Agency to renegotiate their contracts regarding
the implementation of the SPTN, and initial consultations with the bus and taxi operators
affected by the proposed BRT corridor; two months later staff returned to the mayor with a
project proposal for BRT. All this emerged from a ten-day trip to South America.
This idea for BRT first arrived in August 2006 when Lloyd Wright and Todd Litman
visited Johannesburg to present the attributes of BRT to technical and political leaders. Some
officials remember being initially adverse to the idea of BRT: in particular, because they
had already issued contracts to implement the SPTN, a plan aimed at introducing a more
coherent, organized, grid-like shape to existing public transport network first approved in
2003. The SPTN, which included 250 km of public transport priorities on existing lanes,
was designed to allow any node to be easily accessible, running frequent, reliable service
throughout the day. Their visit to Bogota in 2006 was a fundamental turning point after which
they no longer considered the SPTN a sufficient solution. The study tour included critical
learning, provided an opportunity for participants to imagine the possibilities of building BRT
in Johannesburg, and, perhaps most importantly, marked the beginning of long-lasting and
necessary relationships with both technical and political assistants. One participant shared
an almost spiritual moment while travelling up the mountain in Bogota; another revealed
the way in which seeing the variation between systems in Bogota and Guayaquil helped
him to understand the flexibility of the BRT concept; and a third described his experiences
of learning alongside local rivals. All three remarked on the amicable interactions between
participants.
Johannesburg’s second visit in August 2007 to Bogota and Pereira included representatives
from seventeen of the eighteen taxi associations potentially affected. The group was quite
diverse— prior to this trip, some delegates had never been on an airplane, many did not
have a passport, and none had seen a bus with capacity for 160 passengers. Obviously, a
big part of the study tour was physically experiencing the system, but there were also many
critical engagements between informal operators from Johannesburg and their counterparts
in Bogota—they shared experiences working alongside the city in developing BRT, their
practices as formal sector employees, and even the pitfalls of incorporation. The operators in
Pereira told the visitors that they were so opposed to BRT in the beginning that they blocked
the road between Pereira and Bogota and threw their keys into the river but, in sharing their
initial hesitation, they helped Johannesburg-based taxi operators understand the many ways
in which BRT can benefit them. Meeting the operators, even those who initially opposed
BRT, helped Joburgers reinterpret their own situation.
Study tours are particularly critical in relationship building: before the tour you could
not get representatives from the Johannesburg Regional Taxi Council and Top Six Taxi
Management into the same room. Visiting South American created an opportunity to interact
outside the usual charged home turf and they realized, explained one delegate, that they
could not afford to be divided in the face of a strong government eager to establish BRT;
if they worked together, as equals, they would be better able to negotiate with the city for
their share of the BRT. When they returned they formed a steering committee and a technical
working committee with representation from the eighteen affected associations to consult on
BRT implementation. One operator defended the study, explaining that in Bogota he realized
that his experiences were not exceptional and that, if his equivalents in Bogota could work
with their city, perhaps he could at least meet with Johannesburg representatives. Another
delegate explains that, through the study tour, the taxi operators developed a rapport in which
they were no longer rival operators but South Africans eager to see their country prosper.
Learning through policy tourism 2663

The initial opportunities for a working relationship between the affected taxi operators and
the city emerged from this second study tour.
Sometimes new, unexpected ideas emerge from study tours. When the taxi operators
returned from Bogota, the city invited the newly formed steering committee to write a formal
report illustrating their learning experiences overseas. Rather than focusing on TransMilenio,
the taxi operators were smitten with Cyclovia— a program in which every Sunday 150 km
o f the streets o f Bogota are closed to automobiles and replaced with bicycles, runners,
walkers, families, and children. Study tour participants were invited to partake in a Sunday
bicycle ride in Bogota. For many, it was “a liberating experience to be on a bicycle”, and this
feeling o f freedom was a “real transformation in people’s lives”. This unlocked their curiosity
about what was possible in Johannesburg.
Could BRT have happened without these two study tours? Perhaps, explained Rehana
Moosajee, Member o f the Mayoral Committee for Transport, but not as quickly or as quietly.
The delegates, she indicates, came because they were eager to learn about the BRT system in
Bogota; the outcome, however, exceeded her expectations. “The study tours were linked to
an outcome”, she reasoned, and “I think the political message from Mayor Masondo was that
we are serious, we are going to do this, and we might as well work together.”
A spotlight on Cape Town’s visits to South America
In November 2007 a delegation travelled from Cape Town to five cities in South America—
Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador; Bogota and Pereira, Colombia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil— to
learn about BRT. The group consisted o f two city councilors, three city officials, and six private
transport engineers and consultants (who paid for themselves and were currently involved
in public transport initiatives in Cape Town). No representatives from any o f the paratransit
(bus, minibus taxi, or rail) accompanied the group. The official objective o f the study tour
was to apprise local politicians and technical staff o f the range o f international practices with
BRT systems. By this time Cape Town’s MyCiTi BRT system was already underway, so
participants were eager to absorb practical, technical knowledge o f assembly, financing, and
operations. In Cape Town, partnerships between local consultants and international experts
were a prerequisite for tender. Those travelling to South America did so expecting to build
relationships with experienced specialists whose expertise would likely improve the outcome
o f their project proposal. Consultants who did not partake in the visit had more difficulty
associating with the necessary international support and were therefore unsuccessful in their
submissions.
In Bogota the delegation met with a broader array o f individuals including the CEO of
TransMilenio, the developer o f the TransMilenio business model, and a fare system expert.
They rode the major corridors o f TransMilenio to study the experiences aboard the bus,
explored the city center to observe the transit-oriented development projects, and toured the
TransMilenio headquarters to understand how the intelligent transport systems operate. The
visitors also attended a two-day conference on TransMilenio with presentations from local
and international transport experts. In the other cities the delegation travelled on local BRT
systems, reconnoitered the motorized and nonmotorized transport alternatives, and met with
the director o f urban planning, the director o f transport, and the director o f the local BRT
system. Meeting these experts overseas enabled Cape Town planners to call upon them later.
The delegates observed a number o f positive lessons: use o f grade separation at
intersections greatly increases system efficiency; corridors can be developed with relatively
modest resources; strong leadership from the municipality facilitated the rapid completion
o f a first-class product; various techniques to effortlessly incorporate existing minibus taxi
operators; and profit-generation procedures. A director o f transport in the City o f Cape Town
described this first visit as a “true sense o f the word study”. He went on,
2664 A Wood

“ we sucked up all the information about BRT from the engineering to maintenance,
modeling, operating, rolling stock, management, you name it, and we looked at all those
issues. What makes a project successful? W hat made the project not successful? It was a
thorough investigation.”
Not all the wisdom from their more experienced counterparts was wholeheartedly
absorbed: they observed severe overcrowding during peak periods in Bogota and on board
some buses the quality o f the ride was inferior; the delegates also recognized considerable
differences between Cape Town and the sociopolitical and geographic characteristics o f the
cities visited, and they therefore maintained reservations regarding the zero-based subsidy
system in Bogota and presumed that Cape Town’s BRT would still need operational subsidies.
The delegates discussed the costs and consequences o f building cheaper infrastructure versus
frequent maintenance, how to manage demand so that even during peak travel there is more
than one person per seat on the bus but the system is not overloaded, and the pitfalls o f
weak municipal leadership. These critical conversations served to further unify the group
when they returned home. About half o f the delegates who travelled to South America in
2007 remain deeply involved in MyCiTi construction and operations and many attribute the
beginning o f BRT in Cape Town to this initial study tour.
Like their colleagues in Johannesburg, the Capetonians participated in a Sunday
Cyclovia. This was not their first experience with this innovation: Cape Town had previously
experimented with a Sunday bicycle ride along Klipfontein Road as part o f the attempt to build
BRT in 2003. In that instance, a study tour was a major modus o f learning— Tasneem Essop,
then political leader o f transport for the Western Cape Province, was sufficiently impressed
with a presentation by Lloyd Wright in her office to undertake a study tour to Bogota, in which
she took several industry leaders and city officials. While in Bogota the group was hosted
by Enrique Penalosa, the (former) Mayor o f Bogota responsible for the implementation
o f TransMilenio, who shared his experiences o f incorporating the infonnal operators. Not
all study tours led to policy adoption, however, and because o f political, institutional, and
financial limitations the project stalled until this 2007 study tour. Several o f the relationships
formed during the 2003 study tour to Bogota were employed in the rollout o f the MyCiTi
system.
Such anecdotes are an important indicator that study visits are not merely about seeing
best practice in operation, but are critical means through which planners and politicians
in one city meet their counterparts elsewhere. These are vital interactions for sustaining a
project through the political and practical hurdles o f implementation. Policy tourism can also
be instrumental in demonstrating the sincerity o f project adopters. Thus, the value o f such
visits cannot be measured solely by the successful implementation o f South African BRT
projects but through the intensity o f the learning happening while overseas. These accounts
would then indicate that study tours are vital for BRT adoption.

An outsider offers a fresh perspective

The aforementioned stories are representative o f the policy tourism happening through
study tours to South America. The upcoming narratives consider the value o f visits from
international policy experts in introducing a fresh perspective on local matters. Several
consultants came to visit South African cities and their interpretations o f the local context
were instrumental in shaping South Africans’ understanding o f their own conditions. Much
like fact-finding trips to other places, international visits to Cape Town and Johannesburg
were seminal in ongoing BRT adoption. These concerns first emerged in reflections by
South Africans implementing BRT, with regard to the way in which they learned o f BRT and
considered it a worthwhile intervention in their cities.
Learning through policy tourism 2665

The work o f Simmel (1922; 1950) offers the theoretical underpinning for this research on
outsiders and their visits. Simmel’s concept o f the “stranger” as both an “outsider” with no
specific relation to the group and a “wanderer” whose impermanence makes him so, is useful
here in considering the manner by which a distantiated visitor adds valuable inputs about
elsewhere. This somewhat detached individual offers an outsider perspective on the system—
he is a policy actor who is a trusted member o f the local social system but remains extraneous
to its usual functioning. “The groups with which the individual is affiliated constitute a system
o f coordinates”, explains Simmel (1922, page 140), “such that each new group with which
he becomes affiliated circumscribes him more exactly and less ambiguously.” That explains
how and why policy experts are listened to in spite o f their insufficient local knowledge. The
stranger then “is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies
o f the group, and ... is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception,
understanding, and evaluation o f the given” (Levine, 1971, pages 404-405).
One particular outsider o f note is Enrique Penalosa, (former) Mayor o f Bogota responsible
for the implementation o f TransMilenio. On his many visits to South Africa over the last
decade Enrique brought a Southern perspective to the city’s transport challenges. Instead
o f attending only to the efficiency o f transport solutions, he directed South Africans to
concentrate on the improving mobility options that foster personal dignity and, rather than
building roadways, he shared his practices o f building parks and promenades where city
residents can congregate and socialize because, as Enrique pointed out, the poor are poorest
in these moments (Kane, 2003). A South African host remembered that on one driving tour
through Cape Town, Enrique was surprised to find the Foreshore Freeway unfinished, and
even more astonished by the pending plans to complete it. His vision to build cities for
people, not cars, stood in contrast to the tradition o f superior road engineering warmly
cultivated locally. His outsider perspective shed light on South African urban design and to
this day, perhaps because o f his involvement in Cape Town, the Foreshore Freeway remains
incomplete, while the MyCiTi BRT program is flourishing.
Whereas Enrique Penalosa assisted South Africans with the political maneuverings
o f BRT adoption, technical consultants were brought in to share their knowledge of
construction, financing, operations, and management. One international transport engineer,
hired in 2003 to do a feasibility study o f the proposed Klipfontein Corridor in Cape Town,
distinctly remembered his first order o f business was to unearth knowledge o f the minibus
taxi industry— who drives the taxi, who rides in the taxi, and how the service operates. He
was astonished to find that none o f his local colleagues had personal experiences o f riding
in taxis and not one had a personal relationship with the informal paratransit providers. As
an outsider, he was devoid o f the prejudices and stereotypes o f the industry, and early one
morning he arose to experience the morning commute between the southwestern parts o f
the city and the city center. Many o f his experiences fit the preconceived typecasts— the
taxi was overloaded with passengers rushing to work and broke down along the highway,
halfway to town— but what he found fascinating was the speed with which another taxi
arrived to fetch the passengers and complete the journey. While some locals may have seen
a malfunctioning vehicle, he saw a highly functioning system: one that had to be cultivated
through the implementation o f BRT. He utilized his time on the road to learn about the taxi
industry and to build a rapport with taxi drivers and industry officials. This stranger was
able to build a relationship with the taxi industry in a way that was not possible for locals.
His external outlook also added unique knowledge o f both the global and the local context,
making his services indispensable.
One final example took place in May 2012 when the City o f Johannesburg invited Gil
Penalosa, Commissioner o f Parks in Bogota during the implementation o f TransMilenio and
2666 A Wood

now Executive Director o f 8-80 Cities, an NGO based in Toronto with an international range
o f expertise. Part o f his visit to Johannesburg included a public lecture in which he shared
his experiences and knowledge o f walking, cycling, and public transport with Joburgers.
Ordinarily, city officials would visit Gil in Bogota to see his project and learn directly
how they approached certain innovations. Rather than financing expensive international
expeditions reserved only for those directly involved in transport, the city invited Gil to
Johannesburg. In her opening remarks Councilor Moosajee explained her motivations for
bringing Gil to Johannesburg:
“ often cities have the opportunity to interact with experts like Gil but it remains a very
city-based event with politicians and staff. I wanted the people o f Johannesburg to get a
chance to hear it directly from Gil.”
Johannesburg does not have the resources to send all relevant politicians and officials to
South America and, ordinarily, the general public be exposed directly to such international
expertise; in this instance, the city hosted Gil and offered the public a two-hour variation
o f a study tour to get a sense o f global transport challenges and their solutions. Some used
this opportunity to establish a personal relationship with Gil who in turn fueled support for
his message. The concept o f bringing the expert to the city rather than financing expensive
overseas visits establishes a greater variety o f relationships between locals and internationals,
and may become a more frequent practice, especially in cities o f the Global South with
scarcer financial resources.
This contribution on the value o f international visits exhibits the importance o f several
forms o f policy tourism. Not only is it critical for policy adopters to visit elsewhere but,
likewise, adopters learn by hosting experts locally. These visits enable residents to see their
local context through an international perspective. Such encounters also expose the policy
expert to the various local circumstances and may reduce context bias. Local visits, however,
are not a substitute for study tours. They offer a valuable supplementary experience to
strengthen the relationship between adopters and experts to advance future learning.

Conclusion
This paper considered the hundreds o f transport-related study tours to South America,
particularly Bogota, within a theoretical exploration o f policy tourism as a necessary
component o f policy circulation processes. The various narratives o f learning offer a
critical contribution to the literature by addressing logical concerns for the usefulness o f
study tours within debates regarding the way in which these exchanges take place and the
role o f various policy experts and the power structures employed to adopt policies from
elsewhere. The official purpose o f these visits was to learn about the technical features of
construction, financing, and operations as well as the political means to sell BRT public
transport construction and operations, transit-oriented development, systems management,
and sustainable design from these international cases o f best practice with a view towards
implementing BRT in South Africa. More than the material content exchanged, these study
tours were necessary for building relationships between South Africans and South Americans
as well as between delegates, connections which enabled BRT adoption across South Africa.
This concluding section will now consider two outcomes from the study tours— improved
relations between South African and South American transport planners and politicians, and
the relationships between local South African municipalities implementing BRT.
Developing a relationship between BRT implementers in South Africa and South
America was one notable outcome o f the study tours. Because o f the fruitful exchanges
between delegations from Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay to Pereira and Bogota, the
national governments o f South Africa and Colombia signed an accord to exchange technical
expertise on BRT. The first component o f this exchange included a visit from the Managing
Learning through policy tourism 2667

Director of Pereira’s BRT to Nelson Mandela Bay in December 2007. The City of Cape Town
was also invited to take advantage of the technical resources donated from Colombia. These
relationships have been integral to ongoing policy circulation processes.
Closer ties between South African municipalities adopting BRT are another noteworthy
consequence of the various visits. In 2009, shortly after Rea Vaya began operating, Cape
Town officials came to meet with Johannesburg’s transport team and ride the new system.
Mayor Amos Masondo of Johannesburg and Mayor Helen Zille of Cape Town decided to
sidestep politics and share their local experiences with BRT. Delegates from Cape Town
returned twice more to learn how Johannesburg had implemented the Bogota model. The
political heads of transport met on several occasions in which the two discussed issues around
construction, taxi transformation, and financing. Such direct dialogues provide a forum for
social bonding which proves vital in the circulation process. These local visits were also
instrumental in shaping ongoing relations between cities of rival political parties, something
once considered impossible was now happening. Many attribute the possibility of these visits
to earlier study tours to South America.
This paper unpacked the value of study tours in the policy mobilities literature as a
fundamental part of the learning process, through which certain cities are introduced into
conversation (while at times others are pushed further apart), as well as how and why a
particular policy is adopted. These extraordinary expeditions for learning form an integral
part of the policy circulation process providing a somewhat depoliticized space through which
participants consider the innovation outside of their standard reference points. Study tours
are thus more than fun flings but form an essential informational infrastructure necessary for
reintroducing that practice or policy back home. In addition to detailing the happenings and
outcomes of South African study tours, this paper makes an important contribution to the
existing literature on policy tourism by considering the way in which study tours develop
and modify relations between policy exporters and importers as well as among importers.
Observing the efficiency of BRT and studying of the engineering specifications from experts,
in situ, are important parts of policy circulation but, as the paper has shown, building durable
relationships between participants and with hosts is what actually drives policy adoption.
Acknowledgements. 1 would like to thank Jenny Robinson and Ian R Cook for comments on an
earlier draft o f this paper. I am also grateful to the three anonymous peer reviewers whose comments
helped me improve and clarify my arguments. Any mistakes or omissions are of course my own.
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