Cape Town takes step towards fixing passenger rail: ‘The City is quite progressive’ – transport planner (Stellenbosch University)

Africa Melane is joined by Johann Andersen, a road engineer and transport planner at Stellenbosch University’s Department of Civil Engineering.

Listen below.

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Following months of negotiations with the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), the City of Cape Town says it's on track to lay the foundation for future rail devolution.

This week it adopted a comprehensive Rail Feasibility Study, which proposes three potential ownership models for Cape Town’s passenger rail service. 

It also promises to have complete business plans by mid-2025 to take over the management of passenger rail services in the metro.

Andersen says it's an 'extremely positive move'.

"If you look into the future, the challenge that we have with congestion is that we actually have to manage our infrastructure and try and optimise what is available to us to provide options to users."

- Johann Andersen, Department of Civil Engineering, Stellenbosch University

Andersen says rail is an integral part of the public transport network in Cape Town, but a lack of integration between different modes of public transport has been a big problem.

"Unless you can manage that, together with the other modes of transport, it makes it very difficult to provide an optimised system, and I think that's been one of the biggest challenges in the City of Cape Town."

- Johann Andersen, Department of Civil Engineering, Stellenbosch University

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According to Andersen, the City is well-placed to take control of the local rail network.

"The City of Cape Town is quite progressive in this sense... they've got a lot of staff who are well geared towards this... the City is quite unique in that it has this infrastructure available that is so much better and different than any other metro in the country."

- Johann Andersen, Department of Civil Engineering, Stellenbosch University

Scroll up to listen to the full interview from Early Breakfast with Africa Melane.

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