Cape Town - As the exodus and influx of festive holidaymakers picks up speed on other transport forms, Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) has shed almost 4 million passengers and is left with only 12 000.
Prasa is also struggling to attract long-distance customers because passengers don’t trust the service.
The popular Cape Town-East London route will not be working any time soon.
This is according to Transport Deputy Minister Lydia Chikunga who, alongside the newly-appointed Transport director-general, advocate James Mlawu, laid bare problems besetting the recovery of its mainline train service during their appearance before the transport portfolio committee.
Chikunga’s presentation was based on the Main Line Passenger Services (MLPS) which operate long-distance passengers train services Shosholoza Meyl and Premier Classe on the Johannesburg-Musina, Johannesburg-Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town-East London railway lines.
Prasa took over the MLPS from Transnet on November 27, 2008.
“Over the years, the service has faced numerous challenges.
“The limitations on performance are attributed to many things, such as locomotives that were in the phaseout stage when they were transferred, were already in the phase-out stage and started experiencing failures when they were transferred,” Chikunga said.
She said this was compounded by a lack of maintenance plan and skills.
The controversial procurement of Afro4000 and Afro Hybrid trains was aimed at resolving the issue, but the courts found the procurement to be irregular and set it aside, she told the committee.
Furthermore, Prasa doesn’t even use its available fleet on its own rail network because it has been stripped away by vandals in the post-pandemic period.
Prasa uses Transnet’s rail network, which transports goods, to ferry its passengers.
The Cape Town, Komatipoort and Durban routes are off-line and Prasa is fixing the rail lines, she said.
Prasa board chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane said only two routes are up and running, from Johannesburg to East London and Johannesburg to Musina.
He said the problem is the shoddy quality of Prasa’s long-distance network.
A meeting is being set up between the Transnet and Prasa boards to deal with the infrastructure crisis “as 90% of the Shosholoza Meyl (long-distance trains) run on Transnet rail network”, Ramatlakane said.
In turn, Transnet slaps Prasa with high access costs for the use of its rail, acting Prasa chief executive Hishaam Emeran said.
Prasa operated 21 routes and 6 000 long-distance trips in 2009, but they’re left with only two routes this year. By 2021, Prasa only had 99 long-distance trips, Emeran said.
Furthermore, he said, Prasa enjoyed a revenue of R228 million on the MLPS in 2010, which has dwindled to only R2.8 million – a 98% loss.
He said the service has also seen a drop from 4 million passengers to only 12 000.