STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT AND SECRETARY-GENERAL
22 June 2021
PRASA chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane has revealed a staggering lack of urgency by the City pf Cape Town to contribute to fixing the City’s public transport system crisis.
Land is urgently required to house people who have erected shacks on the rail reserve, but PRASA’s attempts to engage Mayor of Cape Town Dan Plato on the issue since at least last September had not elicited a meaningful response, Ramatlakane said.
Addressing the Western Cape Provincial Parliament’s Standing Committee on Transport and Public Works today, Ramatlakane said Metrorail needed to urgently relocate of at least 1350 structures to get Cape Town’s Central Line operative. A total of 7844 dwellings need to be relocated, in all, requiring 55 hectares of land.
Among the solutions proposed to Plato was a land swap, Ramatlakane said.
Cape Town’s Central Line, servicing Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and at least 20 other communities on its route to Cape Town Central Station, was arguably South Africa’s most important rail commuter line. It is the lifeblood of the city.
It’s collapse is compounded by the collapse of the MyCiTi N2 Express bus service to Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha. This service was providing over 200 000 passenger trips a month but has not operated since June 2019 due to the City of Cape Town’s inability to resolve an impasse with the service operators.
The state of public transport in Cape Town is directly attributable to a profound dearth of leadership in Cape Town. It defies belief that the mayor isn’t doing everything he possibly can to facilitate public transport for among Cape Town’s poorest and most far-flung communities.
Plato’s failure to act with haste is a dereliction of duty revealing incompetence of the highest order. While he dithers, tens of thousands of commuters suffer daily.
Plato’s minders will no doubt remind anyone who’ll listen that the rail service is the responsibility of the National Department of Transport. The truth is that all cities have vested interests in functional public transport network, including Cape Town, and one would expect Plato to know this.
* Further bad news revealed today is that PRASA’s Central Line Recovery Plan has made no progress since it was first prepared and presented in 2017/18. The plan presented today, which includes walling, new signalling and relocation of dwellings, makes the same commitments made four years ago.
It was astounding to learn that Metrorail is only able to offer 29 operable train sets to the people of Cape Town. In 2014 when the N2 Express was introduced to assist an oversubscribed rail service there were about 90 train sets operable.
Without an affordable, reliable and integrated public transport providing access, mobility and connectivity, our recovery from radical inequality to inclusive economic growth can never be achieved.
Ends…