A vision of seamless transport
‘We see a moving away from the Gautrain to the Gauteng Management Agency’
Members of the public are being urged to provide input to the proposed amendments to the Gautrain Management Agency Act, 2006, brought into operation in September 2007. This act was passed to provide for establishing the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) as a provincial public entity to manage, oversee and coordinate the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link Project (Gautrain Project).
Since its inception, the GMA has over and above its legislative mandate performed other tasks related to rail and public transport in general. Amendments to this act can be viewed in two very separate lights — either it oversteps the original requirements of the GMA or it could pave the way towards a seamless road, rail and air transport system, co-ordinated under one umbrella.
Both the positives and negatives were debated at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in Johannesburg on June 3 2017, at the first hearing about this topic chaired by the Honourable Jacob Khawe, chairperson of the Roads and Transport Portfolio Committee.
To provide some background to the present scenario, Khawe took delegates back to the Blue IQ multi-billion rand initiative of the Gauteng provincial government to invest in economic infrastructure development in identified megaprojects — the Gautrain was one such project.
Blue IQ works in partnership with national, provincial and local government departments, institutions and private organisations on each of the mega-projects and in working closely with the Gauteng Economic Development Agency, potential investors have access to both macro- and micro-level information on Gauteng and Blue IQ.
“About three years ago, MEC Ismail Vadi asked that we develop an integrated transport management board (ITMB), which has been presented to the executive committee. The bottom-line recommendation was that rail must form the backbone and the GMA must plan around the extension of the rapid rail system,” said Khawe.
“What it means now is that [we] need discussion for clarity. We need to see this presentation in terms of the amendment of the bill. As a committee, unless we are making a mistake, we see a moving away from the Gautrain to the Gauteng Management Agency, which impacts on national legislation.”
Taking up the discussion, Jack van der Merwe, head of the provincial public-private partnership (PPP) unit and chief executive of the GMA said: “The role of Prasa (Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa) and Metrorail is untouched by this [amendment]. All this allows us to do is to plan for future rail transportation. There will still be two rail authorities in Gauteng.”
Concerns raised from the floor included the amendments being “rather broad” and what the PPP process will be. Questions were also raised about whether the rapid rail transit is to be extended to Free State and other provinces, and whether this was covered in the amendments.
Other concerns were that if there was expansion, other corridors such as the west and rand and Soweto would be included due to real constraints in these regions commuting to Johannesburg, Pretoria and places such as Lanseria Airport. Some areas require desperate attention, including cable and metal theft and increasing accidents because the transport network is unreliable.
It was mentioned that the costs of transport accidents could be reduced with a more effective rail network.
The Gauteng Provincial Legislature is urging the public to give their input into the proposed expanded role of the GMA to ensure that the province’s rail system is one that works to their benefit.