Comment: Blues of the golden ticket

I once met a guy who used to travel on the London Underground for fun.

He would buy a single Zone 1 ticket for £1 and set off into the warren, riding trains to the end of the line and then - without ever leaving the stations - head back in the other direction or change lines altogether just to ride.

At the end of the day, he would ride back to the station he had left from, feed his ticket into the turnstile and - "thwack!" - he was back on the streets of London .

Try pull that stunt on the Gautrain and they will hit you with a R700 fine.

Gautrain, for reasons that remain unclear to me, operates on a validation system in which you pay for your journey only when you go through the turnstile at your destination.

I made the mistake the other day of getting off a train at Sandton and, without going through the turnstile, returning to Rosebank, where my cash-flush gold card was most firmly rejected.

On asking why, I was simply told "you're not allowed to". End of discussion, which is more or less to be expected from a railway that treats its passengers like unruly, messy children who should be in bed by sunset.

There must be many office workers in this sprawling conurbation of ours who have a beef with Gautrain's running times. You can't be a midnight-oil burner in Jo'burg and a Gautrain user - those are mutually incompatible states of being.

Pity, too, the tourist who touches down tired and confused at OR Tambo any time after 9pm. And sorry for you who have early flights - best drive yourself to the airport.

In fact, Bombela, the Gautrain concessionaire, says it is investigating the possibility of extended running hours. It frets that more operating staff will be needed and that maintenance is carried out during the shutdown period. (Note that the London Underground manages to cram maintenance of a 400km-long, 150-year-old railway into the wee hours between midnight and 5am.)

Bombela also notes that since Gautrain is a public-private partnership between it and provincial government, it cannot run off and add more trains without going through "due process with the Province who is after all entrusted with the wise allocation of public funds".

Yes, some of that money would be our taxes. Never mind. Is it too much to ask that there is an hourly train service from the airport until midnight? The backpackers and confused Americans and redeye fliers will surely be grateful.

• Ash is the deputy editor of Travel Weekly