State rail agency reveals dramatic decline in commuters

THE Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa continues to lose paying customers by the millions, MPs heard yesterday.

Briefing parliament’s portfolio committee on transport on the state-owned rail company’s annual performance plan, Prasa group chief strategy officer Sipho Sithole said the number of paid-passenger trips went from a baseline of 633 million to 372 million in the 2016/17 financial year.

Between April 1 and December 31 last year, the number of paid-passenger trips dipped to 210.94 million – an indication of commuters’ frustration with a service that is often not reliable. Sithole said customer satisfaction sat at 59.4%. “I think it’s the lowest in the history of the organisation.”

He said to retain customers and improve their experience on Metrorail trains, Prasa needed to shape up. “It can’t go worse than what it is now... We must endeavour to recover the lost customers. We can only achieve this if our trains are reliable, predictable and safe.”

Prasa has set ambitious targets, including a recovery in commuter trips to between 382.4 million and 521.3 million by 2020/21.

It also wants to reduce the number of train delays. From April 1 to December 31 last year, Prasa’s statistics show only 62% of trains were on time. It is planning to improve this percentage to between 68% and 79% this financial year, increasing to between 80% and 85% in 2020/21. This, said Sithole, would be done partly by making sure that coaches which were out of service due to vandalism and lack of maintenance were repaired and serviced at a faster rate through the use of private contractors.

R12.56 billion had been budgeted this year for the modernisation of rolling stock and ailing infrastructure. – African News Agency (ANA)