EDITED: Useful summary of the South African government’s ambitious plans for the first high-speed commuter train line in Sub-Saharan Africa; it’s from a story in The Globe and Mail about the large Canadian firm, Bombardier’s attempts to get their hands on much of the contracts on offer:
South Africa has announced an ambitious plan to upgrade its decaying rail system, with $14-billion to be spent on rolling stock over the next 18 years …
The 80-kilometre Gautrain line, the first high-speed train line in sub-Saharan Africa, is scheduled to be finished by the end of June, allowing passengers to zip between Johannesburg and Pretoria in as little as 26 minutes, with more than 100,000 daily passengers expected. Bombardier’s share of the project is worth more than $2-billion.
The first phase of the project was launched just days before the beginning of the World Cup last year, wowing tourists with its sleek modern trains between the international airport and the Johannesburg business hub of Sandton. But the final phase this month is much bigger … providing a full commuter service to compete with a traffic-clogged expressway.
The South African government will be looking for foreign financiers to support its railway upgrade plan at an investment conference in Cape Town [yesterday and today]. Nearly all of its existing rail fleet was built in the 1950s and 1960s, and its system is aging so rapidly that it was forced to curtail some of its intercity passenger services last year.
The government hopes to buy up to 9,000 new trains and carriages over the next 18 years, beginning next year. Most of the new rolling stock would be for commuter rail lines within the major urban areas …
… Rail companies from around the world, including China, will be bidding for the South African contracts. Some observers suspect that Chinese suppliers will have the edge, especially after a railway investment agreement was announced during a trade mission to China last year by South African President Jacob Zuma …
… Job creation is the top priority of the Zuma government, and it hopes to create up to 100,000 jobs for skilled and semi-skilled workers from its railway upgrade program.
There are also media reports that South Africa could approve a $30-billion high-speed railway between two of its biggest cities, Johannesburg and Durban, with a Chinese company seen as the likely winner of the deal after lobbying hard for it …
Meanwhile, local officials in Johannesburg say they would like to extend the Gautrain high-speed line to the east and south of its existing terminals.
At face value the Gautrain is a commendable project, but a closer look at it reveals some very deep seated problems:
The system is designed to serve the northern and wealthier parts of the Gauteng conurbation rather than the southern parts where transportation needs are most pressing. The high population density areas, Soweto and the various Vaal towns are where the bulk of the working class lives and those are the areas in dire need of a public transportation system. Currently they are served by a very inefficient system of minibus taxis, an aging and very inadequate train system and a sketchy brt system.
The bulk of industries in this area is located in the southern part of the conurbation, not in the northern Johannesburg – Pretoria corridor which is largely middle and upper middle class residential and vast tracts of empty land which just happen to be owned by some of the wealthiest and some of the most politically influential people. It ‘s also interesting to note that quietly over the last 15 years most of that land has been rezoned commercial/industrial, a change from its original zoning as low density residential and peri-urban farmland.
Like the notorious and scandal ridden naval upgrading project and the ruinously expensive and now white elephant world cup stadiums, the Gautrain project is foreign financed at excessively high interest rates and generally unfavorable terms with very little thought given to how payments are to be sustained. Also, all these projects are notorious for promising to deliver thousands of jobs and an upgrade in the technical skills of local workers. The navy upgrade project produced virtually no jobs since most of the highly technical work was done in Germany by the German firms who ran the project. No skills transfer occurred. The stadiums were also built by foreign firms and only created temporary jobs for unskilled laborers. Those jobs vanished after completion and no appreciable skills were transferred.
The early phase of the Gautrain project are already showing deeply troubling signs. The the Tambo Airport – Sandton link which was built in time for the World Cup, involved very little in terms of South African skilled labor and beyond the construction phase created very few jobs since it is highly automated. Most troubling, the maintenence of the system still remains in the hands of foreign firms with negligible South African involvement. Also, despite Gautrain’s wildly optimistic claims, ridership is so low that most trains run at less than 20% capacity. it turns out that the middle classes who are supposed to be the customer base for this phase prefer the convenience of their cars.
Yes, the system is gee-whiz high technology and makes South Africa look like an emerging player. I’ve ridden the O R Tambo Airport – Sandton line several times and found it impressively efficient and well run. It gives quite a favorable impression for a foreigner arriving in South Africa, but in my gloomier moments I regard it as part of the growing Potemkin Village trend in the country.
The Gautrain system does not classify as high-speed rail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail)
It is commuter high speed rail. One cannot have an HSR system in this instant because the stations are too close to each other. HSR defined in Wiki would be for far apart inter cities like JHB to Durban.
quatations for train from jhb to durban,could u pls sent me quoatations for august touring to durban full package