Government targets higher rail and freight volumes

TimesLIVE

21-05-2025

Transport minister Barbara Creecy has told the South Africa France Investment Conference that government has set bold targets as part of its ambition to improve the underperformance of the rail and freight network.
She said government wanted to move 600-million passengers a year on the passenger rail network, 10 times more than the current 60-million.
'In our ports, we want to achieve the international benchmark for gross crane moves an hour, which is between 30 and 35.
'At the moment, on a good day, we are doing 15 or 16 gross crane moves an hour. You will understand the impact that has on the speed with which our consumers are being serviced,' she said.
Gross crane moves refer to the average container moves an hour measured in the total crane operation hours.
Creecy said currently, South Africa was moving 300,000 tonnes of air freight a year, and the target was to move 1-million tonnes by 2029.
Creecy said because of rail passenger and freight challenges, South Africa has a high accident and death rate on its roads.
'The aim is to halve the rate of accidents and the death rate by 50% by 2029. I can say at the moment with all the work we are doing, we have managed to reduce the accident and fatality rate by 15%, we believe this is an achievable target,' said Creecy.
She said the national rail policy and the freight logistics road map, which have both been adopted by cabinet, focused on private participation in the logistics industry and was part of the government's rail reform ambition.
'What these two policy documents ensure is that for the first time in the history of our country, we can have what we call third party participation in Transnet and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa.
'We have always had private sector participation in our port terminals, but we have not had private sector participation in passenger rail or in freight network,' she said.