Prasa's new passenger trains promise a revamp of commuter rail
The fear of using South Africa’s rail system is very real, with the exception of the state-of-the-art Gautrain. Not only are commuters targets of crime, but stations are not user-friendly, they see little effective and visible policing, communication is unclear around downtime when cable or track theft happens or dead bodies on the line are discovered, leaving them in the dark and ultimately having to seek alternative modes of transport.
What would be the cheapest commuting option — not to mention the most environmentally friendly, is being stalled by a plethora of factors, but Metrorail, the Passenger Rail Association of South Africa (Prasa), Transnet, the Railway Safety Agency (RSA), department of community safety and other agencies, such as the South African Police Services and Sisonke Community Railway Task Team are frantically scrambling to restore confidence in rail and improve infrastructure through collaboration.
The first step was a two-day summit on October 28 and 29 2016 in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, hosted by the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Roads And Transport, led by honorable chairperson Jacob Khawe. The summit was themed: “modernisation of public transport for reliable use”. The first day covered presentations and three breakaway commissions to debate not just the issues, but also the opportunities. Day two involved creating community participation by surveying commuters at Park Station in Johannesburg.
The summit represented one of the ways that the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Transport is following up on its commitment to the citizens of Gauteng and affording oversight in the roads and transport sector.
Opening the summit, honourable member of the Roads and Transport Committee Mohatla Tseki said: “We do have an integrated master plan, but we need to look at how we bring Prasa into the overall picture to evolve towards producing a reliable, effective and to some extent, cost-sensitive transport sector. The rail sector represents a nation’s competency. This sector also needs to include the security cluster — the men and women in blue who keep us safe and others involved in community safety.
“There is a house called the National Council of Provinces, which is permanently staffed by delegates and if someone wishes to bring issues to the attention of a department, this entity is obligated to take an issue up and raise it in national parliament.
Different minds
“Civil society represents our eyes and ears and if you see issues, you need to be able to have them heard and addressed. Equally, we have got pieces of legislation governing rail, but within this we need to provide clarity and we need to revisit sections as required to close up legislative gaps.
“We need to start tackling issues and we need to do this in this financial year.”
“I really want us to accept the call from various organisations to bring together different minds under one roof to talk about the rail environment,” took up the honourable member and chairperson of the Roads and Transport Committee, Jacob Khawe.
“Is a functional provincial and national rail system a dream or achievable?” asked Khawe.
Prior to the start of the meeting, the committee went on a rail trip from Westonaria to Park Station to survey commuters, which demonstrated significant confusion among passengers about the committee’s role but garnered a bottom line result that commuters are not happy with the existing services, with some heartbreaking outcomes discovered from commuters who had suffered repeatedly poor experiences.
“In a recent University of Johannesburg report, people — especially in the West Rand — choose to walk or use their cars rather than use bus, train or taxi services,” said Khawe. “Of major concern is public transport and its impact on health and the inability for some citizens to be able to have an acceptable level of access to health services using rail.
“We must mobilise everyone in the rail industry to ensure that this becomes the most reliable and safe service. We know it is still the cheapest mode of transport. If we can build relationships and confidence in the communities, resolve delays, implement modernised trains and and bring new [routes] to the communities, this will make a significant contribution to reducing traffic congestion and pollution.”
Khawe asked delegates to give a moment of silence for all those people who have died as a result of trains, not just through accidents such as the recent Tembisa rail tragedy, but also through crimes and other loss — including loss of opportunity, saying that “trains are not supposed to victimise but to take people safely from one point to another.”
Responsibilities and reaction
One of the glaring issues that the summit is looking to improve is security and the roles and responsibilities for safety and policing. It was stessed that there should be clarity on, for example, the railway police not being a separate entity, but a unit within the South African Police Services.
Disparities in policing and security are real challenges being highlighted by the Sisonke Community Railway Task Team and its linked initiative, the United Commuters Voice (UCV), which operates in Gauteng, the Western and Eastern Cape and Kwazulu Natal. Paul Soto, UCV’s Gauteng’s western region executive member, mentioned the lack of cohesion as one of their problems — with UCV being perceived as invading different spaces in their quest to achieve this cohesion.
“We see the department of transport moving to a networked system, for example, a park-and-ride system, but this is seeing an increase in crime,” said Soto. “We have managed to break some boundaries and come together, but we need more key role players, collaboration [between departments] and more initiatives.
“For example, in our travels we have seen school children not just smoking but dealing in dagga in Kempton Park, which requires intervention from the department of education and the department of social development.
“We don’t presently get support from the Prasa ‘godfathers’, but they are benefitting from what we are doing and we are not here to take their jobs. We are asking the Gauteng Provincial Legislature to drive the process, to engage with the railways regulator. There are different challenges in different Gauteng corridors. Let us see what we can do to create a service environment,” he concluded.
Gauteng Provincial Legislature will consider views from Gauteng commuters on their experiences using rail on November 19 at Park Station at 9am