City should run Metrorail
AN OPEN letter to Tony Ehrenreich.
It’s time to both smell and sip the coffee. It’s also high time for Metrorail, like Eskom, to take a hike because of the intense harm it is inflicting on society and the poor in particular.
As Metrorail collapses week by week, the cost of commuting is mounting, our congested roads are nearing gridlock and worst of all, the emission of greenhouse gases produced by vehicular traffic is causing climate change to accelerate dangerously. It’s a toxic mix that bodes ill for all of us.
From my perspective as a councillor, it is indeed time to put politics aside and to bring in as many modes of transport through the support of as many parties as possible under the City’s control.
An efficient and cost-effective rail service is absolutely necessary.
This is to mitigate the legacy of apartheid by offering township residents cheaper and swifter mass transport. It is also vital for the revival of our ailing economy.
If the City had failed the poor and the marginalised before, let us in the present and future attack that indifference while acknowledging that the only viable solution in respect of the city’s rail woes is for the City administration to take over.
As the representative of Cope I am pressing for the City to take over Metrorail in its entirety or to lease Metrorail infrastructure to run the City’s own trains. It will immediately dawn on everyone that the City should have taken over the running of the rail service years ago.
Eskom, SAA and Metrorail are all failing South Africa and its economy. They should all take a hike as Wednesday’s Argus headlined in respect of Eskom. It is time to serve the poor optimally by relieving some of these parastatals of their parasitic role and disastrous failures with massive consequences for all of us.
I say the City must strive to take over the train service and to work out the modalities as best fits the situation.