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Eyewitness News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Eyewitness News
Cape Town rail plan still not finalised, provincial legislature told
Members of the Western Cape provincial legislature were surprised to be told that the much-vaunted plan to shift passenger rail management from the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) to the City of Cape Town has not been finalised. In his presentation to the Standing Committee on Mobility on Friday, PRASA Western Cape regional manager Raymond Maseko said the Service Level Plan (SLP), which marks the first step toward the devolution of passenger rail in the metro to the City in terms of the Land Transport Act of 2009, was 'not yet complete'. Maseko said a meeting was scheduled for 29 May to complete the plan's terms of reference so it could be put into operation. Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said in a speech in the city council on 5 December last year that he was 'glad to announce' PRASA had signed the SLP 'to improve Metrorail in the short-term'. It was later discovered that City manager Lungelo Mbandazayo only signed the SLP on 21 February, with City Mayco member for Urban Mobility Rob Quintas saying 'planning' was 'underway' to implement it. The SLP has already been years in the making. After delays on PRASA's side, Hill-Lewis in 2023 threatened to declare an intergovernmental dispute, and commuter activist organisation #UniteBehind instituted legal action to compel the parties to sign an agreement. Most of Maseko's presentation to the committee focused on the loss of rail corridors and all but seven of 124 railway stations in the metro during the Covid lockdown, and the efforts to recover from this. This included the need to move thousands of people who had built homes on the central line's rail reserve and on the railway line itself in Langa, Philippi, and Nyanga. He said the first train to Chris Hani station, at the end of the central line, ran on 7 April this year, but it was a single line and they were working on getting the second, dual line operational. The central line branch to Kapteinsklip in Mitchell's Plain still needed to be recovered. Speaking on the SLP - yet to be implemented, Maseko said the City was the planning authority and would direct PRASA about how many passengers needed to be carried on transport corridors. PRASA would then indicate what it could support and what it would take to meet the target. For instance, if 20,000 passengers needed to be carried per hour on the southern line, a train would have to run in each direction every three minutes. 'We are not there yet,' said Maseko. (Currently, a train runs every 20 minutes during peak hours.) He said the SLP also facilitated social housing developments around stations, such as the development at Goodwood station, which also helped protect the station and the surrounding line from vandalism or occupation. 'PRASA has land that can be developed by developers, at Retreat, at other stations, for student accommodation at Unibell (station). None of these are possible without working together with the City of Cape Town.' Similarly, in planning for seamless intermodal public transport with a single ticketing system, he said PRASA needed to work with the provincial government, which managed public transport interchanges. An SLP with the province was being developed for this purpose. Addressing the committee after making a formal request to do so, #UniteBehind founder Zackie Achmat said he was 'shocked to hear' that some legal questions on the SLP were still being discussed. Achmat said the reason there is an SLP is because #UniteBehind had taken PRASA to court. 'We had to beg for it, from both PRASA and the City.' He said their efforts since 2017 were ignored until Hill-Lewis took office at the end of 2021. He asked why there was no public participation on the SLP and requested that Maseko provide the organisation with PRASA's universal access policy so that people with disabilities could also use the train service with ease. ANC committee member Benson Ngqentsu also questioned the lack of public participation in the drafting of the SLP. Ngqentsu said it was 'evident there's an in-principle SLP and its rollout is underway', but the plan was still 'under construction'. 'Have stakeholders in the rail sector been meaningfully engaged? Has labour been engaged? What do the workers say?' GOOD Party committee member Brett Herron said it seemed the SLP was a secret document. 'I had to search everywhere for it and could not find it online.' Herron said the plan was not published, and it was not part of a public participation process. 'I don't understand the inability to share it with the public.' He said he had nonetheless managed to get hold of a copy, but it made 'very vague commitments' for PRASA and the City to work together, with no set targets or a plan to work towards achieving them. He also said the agreement on creating an intermodal, single ticket transport system was formulated in 2015, and there was no apparent plan for universal access. In a statement later published on Politicsweb, Herron said the SLP presentation was 'theatrical bluster'. 'It's not actually a plan at all,' he wrote, adding that the document, which had been 'shrouded in secrecy' seemed to rather be a means to shield the City in litigation brought against it and PRASA by #UniteBehind and did not move the City any closer to managing the passenger rail service. Quintas, who attended the meeting as an observer, said the City's business cases for the three scenarios outlined in its own rail feasibility study were 'near completion', with the finishing touches being added 'in a month or two'.
IOL News
17-05-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Political fault lines emerge as PRASA outlines rail service recovery
Prasa has managed to restore the Central and Cape Flats line. Image: Prasa/Supplied A recent presentation by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament's Standing Committee on Mobility has highlighted progress in rail service recovery across the province, but also exposed deep political fault lines over the City of Cape Town's role in the future of commuter rail. The briefing, framed as an update on the Service Level Plan (SLP) agreed between PRASA and the City, outlined operational improvements. These include the restoration of 13 train services and a rise in train punctuality from 81.1% last year to 87.4% in 2024/25. Train cancellations have also dropped significantly from 7.2% to 4.6%. Yet despite these gains, serious concerns remain. The Central Line, a vital commuter corridor linking Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain with Cape Town and Bellville, continues to struggle with informal settlements encroaching on the tracks. PRASA presented phased relocation plans but stopped short of committing to any firm timelines. The agency also projected an ambitious growth in daily commuter numbers from 53,000 currently to over 340,000 by 2026, under its Operation Bhekela programme. However, the details around the critical SLP with the City of Cape Town remained vague and largely incomplete. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading PRASA laid out a phased vision to move from limited service to full rail operations by 2030, promising faster trains, integrated digital systems, and modernised stations. Yet, it offered scant clarity on how the City would engage in operational responsibilities or take over any rail services. This lack of transparency has drawn sharp criticism from political leaders alike, with accusations that the City is evading accountability amid ongoing legal challenges related to transport failures. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis confirmed in Council last December that the City received a signed SLP from PRASA after months of negotiations. He described it as a 'big step' towards the future devolution of rail services to municipal control. 'Taking charge of Metrorail is especially important for lower-income households, who would save an estimated R932 million a year if trains were working as they should,' Hill-Lewis said. The City also adopted a Rail Feasibility Study, completed last December, which outlines three possible ownership models for the City's potential takeover of the rail network. Business plans for each model are expected by mid-2025. The entire devolution process is estimated to cost R123 billion over 30 years, relying heavily on national subsidies and private sector investment. Brett Herron (GOOD), Member of the Provincial Legislature and party Secretary-General, dismissed the SLP as a 'non-plan' and 'theatrical bluster.' 'Friday's presentation confirmed why it was kept secret, it's not a plan at all,' Herron said. 'It contains none of the essential requirements under the National Land Transport Act. No vision for investment, commuter rights, or network recovery.' He accused the City and PRASA of drafting a superficial document designed solely to defend themselves in court against litigation from civil society organisation, Unite Behind. Western Cape Provincial Secretary of the South African Communist Party and ANC Mobility Spokesperson, Benson Ngqentsu (ANC), condemned PRASA's repeated denial in the legislature that an SLP existed. 'This lie was repeated today by PRASA executives,' Ngqentsu said. 'There is an SLP in place, and denying it is deceitful.' Ngqentsu criticised the broader devolution initiative, warning it reflects harmful 'neoliberal reforms' aligned with the Democratic Alliance's agenda. He called for the national government instead to back merging PRASA and Transnet into a single, publicly owned entity to better serve the public interest.
