People are scared to use Metrorail‚ says expert

People are scared to use Metrorail‚ even if they have never used it before‚ a researcher told a conference on Wednesday.

Public transport consultant Pieter Onderwater‚ one of the speakers at the Southern African Transport Conference and Exhibition in Pretoria‚ told the gathering that people were scared to use Metrorail even though they had never used it.

Onderwater’s presentation looked at different influence factors for passenger train use. These factors were clustered into three groups - socio-economic aspects‚ internal train system aspects‚ and other transport systems’ aspects.

He believes the response to these influence factors are different for different travel purposes - work or education and social or leisure.

Lower-income (captive) passengers would rather spend money on housing and food than on transport.

Therefore‚ commuter trips are made with the least financial burden; even if it has to take more time or effort‚ he said

He explained that train passengers have three budgets to consider: time‚ money and effort‚ with the latter budget more difficult to measure.

“Effort relates to how easy it is for train passengers to get onto a passenger rail service. Most of South Africa's public transport systems are not accessible to people with disabilities. And some have to walk three to five kilometres just to find public transport‚” he stated.

He said people won't use public transport if they don't know how the system works or are not familiar with the timetables.

Onderwater said passenger train services very seldom realise time improvements in their services‚ with trip times and station-to-station times not changing much. The exception is Gautrain‚ which has decreased train-to-train times from 12 minutes to 10 minutes.

He said train comfort is more important to leisure train travellers than captive users‚ with seated passengers feeling greater discomfort levels in crowded trains than standing passengers.

He added that South Africa could expect 5% passenger rail growth‚ although this figure is capped because current train services cannot meet the demand.