One year into the construction of railways of South Africa’s first partly underground express train, the focus is on the completion of routes that are crucial for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
The Gautrain, which will link Johannesburg and Pretoria from 2011, will have 10 stations between the two cities. These will include the Johannesburg Park station, Rosebank, Sandton, OR Tambo International Airport and Pretoria station.
National Transport Minister Jeff Radebe visited the sites of the Johannesburg and Rosebank rail tracks and stations on Wednesday. The short tours, which took less than 10 minutes each, were to brief the minister and Gauteng transport minister Ignatius Jacobs on the progress of construction.
“I am completely satisfied with the work we saw today,” said Radebe who, after the Rosebank tour, addressed a media briefing at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Rosebank.
The minister said that work on the 80km route is progressing. “I can confirm that the route between OR Tambo International Airport and Sandton will be completed in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup,” he said.
Gautrain project leader Jack van der Merwe confirmed that the exact date of completion for this route will be May 2010.
Fifteen kilometres of tunnelling has been completed and the first bridge over the Jukskei River is under construction.
“Four more bridges are being built and train and bus depots are under construction in Midrand,” said Radebe, referring to depots that will be used to stable and service the Gautrain’s 24 train sets and to station its 150 buses. The bus depot’s administrative building has been completed.
Jacobs said the Gautrain will be a South African system of transport. “This is not Madrid, London or Spain. I agree that we must compare the standards to those of other countries, but remember that this is our system,” he said.
He added that his department did well in handling the costs of the 1 142 properties that had to be demolished to make way for the Gautrain.
“I think that if we had not satisfied the various property owners in negotiating with them in terms of the value of their properties, we would then have been in court every single day because there were a lot of people to deal with. I believe that we handled that well because there were no major hiccups on issues of land,” he said.
October is marked as National Transport Month, and Radebe said that the Department of Transport is encouraging the use of public transport. “There has been a 40% shift from private to public transport in the last couple of months and the number is rising,” he said.