City is back on track for reliable rail, says mayor
CITY of Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says residents will soon be able to use an efficient train service again.
Speaking to CapeTalk Radio, Geordin Hill-Lewis said the City would soon have an integrated public transport system with rail as its backbone.
“I can’t think of any city in the world of 4.8 million people or more rapidly growing that can operate successfully every day and move all those people around the city to home from work without a rail system.
“It’s just too difficult to move that many people and even cities much smaller than ours have functioning rail, light rail or train systems and some form of rail public transport that is able to move a lot of people at a time,” he said.
Hill-Lewis said five years ago more than 600 000 people used trains in Cape Town every day and now that number had drastically dropped, by 97%. “While we see that some trains services are coming back people just don’t trust anymore that trains are reliable and they are checking out of the system and spending 30% or 40% of their monthly income on minibus taxis and buses including much more expensive modes of different public transport.”
He said rail had to become the backbone of an integrated transport system.
“Taxi operators need to see the opportunity that there’s much more revenue for them in shorter trips that happens more frequently, so instead of taxis spending an hour-and-a-half on the highway doing one trip, now they can do more trips shuttling people to train stations or MyCiTi bus stations.
“They can also save on fuel costs, do more trips and generate revenue. There’s opportunities for every taxi operator from the integrated transport system,” he said.
He also highlighted that without a reliable rail system, the MyCiTi Bus system was working well and used by thousands and this year alone it had already recorded 14.8 million passenger trips including Golden Arrow.
“When we reopened the N2 express earlier this year, we sold over 180000 monthly cards in the first few weeks and that was precisely because there’s a lack of alternatives.
“The purpose of MyCiTi will never take over from rail and you cannot take more than 700 000 passengers on little buses around the City everyday,” he said.