Metrorail has lost over half its customers

METRORAIL has lost more than half its customers over the past four years, thanks to irregular service and threats to passenger safety.

However, a new security strategy led to 66 arrests, 27 convictions and a significant improvement in protecting passengers as well as assets targeted by scrap metal thieves.

“We’re on the comeback trail. We hope, over time, commuter confidence will be restored,” said MEC for Transport Donald Grant.

This week, Metrorail, the city council and the provincial government reported on the successes of the Rail Enforcement Unit’s first 100 days in action. The unit’s extra 100 officers are patrolling trains and stations, along with other joint operations with the SAPS and Metro Police.

Over the past three months, it has searched more than 11 000 people and confiscated 517 items including metal cables, weapons, chunks of rail track, stolen laptops and fake train tickets.

Despite the arrests, Metrorail regional manager Richard Walker said the only way to put an end to the theft crippling the rail system was to destroy the illegal scrap metal industry.

“We arrest a lot of people on a daily basis, but we find for every person we remove, two or three take their place.”

However, Walker said none of the arrests so far were linked to train arson attacks, which have cost Metrorail R520 million in damages over four years and taken 174 coaches out of commission.

The service has 48 train sets running, and hopes to increase that to 60 before the end of April. That still falls short of the 88 needed to provide a regular service, but it’s better than the worst periods of last year, when only 36 trains were running. Fewer trains have caused the service to become so unreliable that many passengers have chosen to face the traffic instead. Four years ago, Metrorail recorded an average of 620 000 passenger trips every day. That figure is now below 300 000.

“You can see the exodus – clearly they’ve gone to road-based transport.

“The reason why you see the gridlock traffic in Cape Town is because the trains aren’t working,” Walker said.

An Inrix report recently found Cape Town was the most congested city in the country, with motorists spending an average of 162 hours in traffic per year.

Walker said one of the drastic measures they are taking to prevent further metal theft involves closing up the railway line in hotspot areas, with prefabricated concrete walls.

They have budgeted R70m for 30km of wall in the stretches between Bonteheuwel, Lavistown, joining up with the existing wall in Nyanga and on towards Philippi.