Rail court battle to start today

The Rail Safety Regulator (RSR) and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) court battle over the RSR’s refusal to issue Prasa with a safety permit is expected to enter its second day today.

The court action – initiated on Sunday after the regulator refused to back down – came in the failure of a meeting between the two boards to try and resolve the matter.

“The objective of the meeting was to get to the bottom of what the [Prasa] board is doing to fix this state-owned entity [SOE] and what they are doing to reduce the continued train crashes that are taking place almost weekly now,” said the DA’s shadow transport minister, Manny de Freitas.

“I had naively thought that Prasa had at least a plan so that the RSR would be convinced to change their ruling.”

De Freitas said the presentation by Prasa left him “more despondent and depressed than ever before”.

“Prasa supplied nothing new. No solutions. No new ideas.

“The multiparty portfolio committee were united in their criticism of the board. We all agree that they need to address the issues confronting us today,” said De Freitas.

He noted the current rail system was dangerous, constantly late and not fit to solve the serious issues faced by South African cities and its commuters.

“In 2009, buses transported about 1.2 million people to work and today just over 1.4 million. In comparison, trains carried 2.7 million people in 2008 while trains today transport only 1.2 million people a day.

“In fact, Prasa lost nearly 60% of their clients in 20 years, mostly in the last five years. This, despite an increasing population and millions being added to the work force,” De Freitas said.

At risk are nearly two million commuters who use Prasa’s trains on a daily basis countrywide. It would also affect the freight industry.

The RSR notified Prasa of its intention to revoke Prasa’s safety permit following a trainto-train collision last week near Van Riebeeck Station in Kempton Park during manual authorisation in which 300 people injured.

“Of the total number of manual authorisations, more than 33% [165 488] instances are as a result of continued vandalism of signalling equipment and theft of signalling cables,” said Prasa spokesperson Nana Zenani in a statement.

“These sustained attacks on rail infrastructure have reached unprecedented levels with our employees in some instances being physically harmed by criminals.”