Arson is the least of Metrorail’s challenges

WHAT does an ideal, effective and efficient railway system look like? Asked differently, what is a benchmark of a great railway system that anchors a city’s economy with minimal disruption?

First of all, a railway system is an integral part of the transport system in all economic hubs, from Cape Town to London, Hong Kong to Paris and even the world’s economic epicentre, New York City.

Unlike Cape Town and South Africa, the other cities have always understood that an “immaculately clean, well-signposted, cheap, regular, and convenient system that connects the entire city’s economic activity” is the minimum standard of any railway system that can sustain a vibrant and dynamic city.

In order to have this kind of train system, it follows that from the outset we need sufficient investment. According to Riana Scott, head of marketing and communication at Metrorail Western Cape: “The primary reasons for inefficiencies on WC trains are old and obsolete technology as a result of decades of disinvestment in rail and perpetual vandalism.”

Prasa, therefore, inherited a train system that had experienced years of defunding and disinvestment.

That, however, was 24 years ago. The ANC government would have been expected to do a detailed audit of what it would take to create a worldclass railway system and how much would the government invest over time as its fiscal capacity grows.

Finally, in 2011, presenting to the transport committee on their recapitalisation plan, Lucky Montana, then Prasa chief executive, said: “Most of our trains are between 30 and 50 years old, and should be scrapped in the next three years.”

True to Prasa’s plan as articulated in 2012 by its chief executive, in 2017 – while launching a new set of trains – then president Jacob Zuma said: “We are investing R51 billion on buying new trains and R4bn on new hybrid locomotives. All in all, the investment programme towards the modernisation of passenger rail infrastructure and services totals R173bn.”

While explaining why Prasa had to hire locomotives from a private company against Treasury instructions for the December 2017 holidays, executive manager of mainline passenger services Mthuthuzeli Swartz said the country’s passenger rail service had only 36 locomotives to run the entire service, down from 124 in 2009. He went on to say the mainline passenger services had had to reduce the number of trains it ran from more than 6 000 in 2009 to the current 1 872 trains.

This means that between 2011, when Prasa presented its recapitalisation programme, and 2017, when it actually went ahead with it, we lost more than 70% of our locomotives. Of course, even from that report, the chief executive had said most of our trains would not last the next three years. This means the recapitalisation should have happened between 2011 and 2014.

It is therefore disingenuous to suddenly blame arson as the main cause of the current challenges Prasa faces. Despite destruction of coaches through arson, according to Metrorail, the main contributors to train delays last year were rolling stock (old trains) at 16%, vandalism and theft at 22%, and signals (obsolete infrastructure) at 24%.