Prasa says it working to regain passengers by investing in security and infrastructure after inefficiencies and the pandemic slashed customer numbers by 90%.
Prasa's chief engineer for rail infrastructure, Fana Marutla, told the annual Southern African Transport Conference in Pretoria this week that very few people were using trains.
“Unfortunately, rail passenger numbers are still very low. In 2014/2015 Prasa figures were 600-million passenger trips a year. In the last financial year we did 35-million passenger trips. We are still not even 10% of what was done in 2014/15.”
He said the group was also investing in rebuilding signalling, which was vandalised during the pandemic.
“On a lot of our lines, particularly in Gauteng, we are running one train per hour, which is not ideal. We want to run a train every 15 [minutes], but on most of our lines we are running a train every hour or every 45 minutes. It is only in the Western Cape, on the Simon's Town line, where we are running trains every 20 minutes,” he said.
Prasa had struggled with inefficiencies well before the pandemic. In 2019 President Cyril Ramaphosa was stuck in a Metrorail train in Cape Town for four hours on what was meant to be a 45-minute journey.
Marutla said Prasa was making progress on securing its properties.
“The good thing about our trains at the moment is that they are secured — on every train there is security at the station, inside the train. A person cannot be mugged on the train.”
Prasa was also rolling out a safety plan to stamp out theft and vandalism.
“You can recover the network, but it gets vandalised again and we cannot afford that. We are trying to safeguard our infrastructure so that not everyone can get into the rail reserve”. He said the wall around the Braamfontein depot in Johannesburg was an example of improved security.
“We want to do the same with the priority corridors. We have awarded the contract for the line between Pretoria and Mabopane. There is going to be a wall covering the rail reserve, and we will do the same thing on the central line in Cape Town. We think that will contribute towards [preventing] intrusion by people building shacks and all of that.”
Marutla said Prasa spends almost R2bn to bolster security on the rail lines, money that could be used to improve the network.
“For me the R2bn is money we can use to build new lines and to expand the network. However we have to protect it [infrastructure] one way or the other. That is not an ideal situation.”
The good thing about our trains at the moment is that they are secured — on every train there is security at the station, inside the train. A person cannot be mugged on the train
— Prasa's chief engineer for rail infrastructure Fana Marutla
Prasa is rebuilding its infrastructure after the board decided to cancel security contracts during the pandemic.
“There was Covid and then everything just collapsed. People decided to vandalise the infrastructure. What made matters worse, is that the board of Prasa at that time decided to cancel security contracts. That cancellation of security contracts exposed our infrastructure to those who wanted to vandalise it. It got vandalised to the ground; that is very sad”.
However, Prasa was getting passenger trains back on track with 31 of the 40 rail corridors now operational.
Marutla said that due to violence, including gangsterism, security along the Central Line in Cape Town, which transports 60% of passengers in the Western Cape, was being prioritised.
“There are security guards everywhere because of gangsterism in the Western Cape, there are people who are ready for vandalism. Then there are the construction mafias, they are destroying the infrastructure we are working so hard to recover. We are working so hard so that if a young person is looking for a job they can get a train ride to the job. At the moment it is difficult.”
However, the central line is not fully operational after homes were illegally built on the railway tracks in Cape Town during the Covid19 lockdown.
According to its 2022/23 annual report Prasa said it approached the court for eviction notices for more than 5,000 people who have illegally occupied its train stations. It is working towards a relocation process that is expected to take place in two phases.
In phase 1 it aims to relocate people using 1,254 structures on railway tracks near Langa station. Phase 2 entails the relocation of 3,688 informal dwellers at Philippi station and 253 illegal dwellers at the Khayelitsha station.
“These illegal settlements compromise Prasa's ability to provide a much-needed train service to critical areas such as Khayelitsha and Kapteinsklip,” the group said in its latest annual report.
Marutla said consideration was being given to the idea of combining the management of Transnet and Prasa infrastructure.
“Transnet railways and our railways are the same, the standards are the same. If the country were to say let’s have one infrastructure manager, that might not necessarily be a wrong idea. That is a possibility. Whether you have two infrastructure managers or combine them, we will leave it up to the politicians.
“As engineers we want to make sure the trains are running, and our people use the trains as much as possible.”
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