Prasa welcomes rail investment green light

The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) has welcomed government's green-light for a multi-year, multi-billion rand recapitalisation of both freight and passenger rail.

Prasa's operational divisions -- Metrorail and Passenger Mainline (Shosholoza Meyl) -- would get 8600 new coaches (equal to 718 new train sets) and 2000 new locomotives (diesel engines) respectively, it said in a statement on Thursday.

Prasa was expecting delivery of the first batch of trains in 2015, in time for the replacement of about 2200 obsolete coaches, almost half of the operating fleet of 4600 whose average age was 36 years.

"A significant number of our trains are due for retirement between 2013 and 2015," Prasa CEO Lucky Montana said.

"The age profile and the fleet introduced 40 years ago is not viable anymore technologically and, if we do not urgently replace the rolling stock, Metrorail will face certain collapse," he said.

Under its 1994 mandate, Prasa, then still operating as the SA Rail Commuter Corporation, "arrested the decline in Metrorail services and stabilised passenger rail services".

Between 2004 and 2010, Prasa spent R7 billion on refurbishment of 2000 coaches in preparation for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

"If we did not intervene and stabilise the decline in Metrorail, we would not be speaking of passenger rail services today," Montana said.

Prasa had acknowledged, however, that the stabilisation and R7 billion refurbishments were not enough to improve the customer experience on passenger rail services in line with world standards.

"We spent R23 million just to keep the service running while Metrorail still does not deliver a world class service.

"Arresting the decline of our passenger rail services as part of our mandate has not been effectively felt and experienced by our consumers at platform level who still face daily delays and service interruption as a result of an old and under-resourced passenger rail service.

"What we need is new rolling stock urgently, that will be the deciding factor in improving our customer experience and elevating rail as the backbone of public transportation," Montana said.