PASSENGER Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) CEO Lucky Montana yesterday criticised plans to cede commuter rail facilities to municipalities, saying cities had neither the money nor the skills to make the investments required to reverse the decline of commuter rail services in the country.

The devolution of commuter rail services to municipalities is envisioned in the National Land Transport Act and the City of Cape Town has decided to investigate the viability of this. Mr Montana’s comments could put a spanner in the city’s plans when the act seeks to give local government control of transport services.

Mr Montana said a proposal by Cape Town that it manage commuter train services in the city as well as disburse the subsidy that Prasa subsidiary Metrorail currently receives from the Treasury was informed by "an erroneous view" of the condition and function of Metrorail and would be "inappropriate".
Cape Town mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron yesterday said the city would soon put out a tender for consultants to conduct a due diligence report on Metrorail to better understand the possible implications for assuming responsibility for the rail service.

Understanding what a transport authority is was part of the debate between Prasa and Cape Town, said Mr Herron. The city had expressed its ambition to offer a better commuter rail service and had suggested that it be given the subsidy and the assets to better serve the commuters, he said.

However, Mr Montana warned that should Metrorail be "chopped up" and part of it transferred to Cape Town, along with the R800m subsidy from the state, commuter rail services in cities such as East London and Port Elizabeth would have to be terminated because there was "major cross-subsidisation" within the commuter rail business.

The design of the commuter networks in lower-density passenger areas is a legacy of apartheid’s spatial planning, which created dormitory townships for labourers on the edges of metropolitan areas.
The trains are full twice a day as workers travel to and from work, but for much of the rest of the time run irregularly. In the larger metros, these fluctuations in volume are manageable as the peak volumes are high enough to dent the steep drop in passengers during the day, but this is not the case in smaller towns.

Mr Herron said Cape Town wanted to "get to the bottom of that issue" of cross-subsidisation, to understand whether the city was paying for the service in other parts of the country. "We need to make sure that our commuters are getting value and a better service."

Prasa, at the end of this month, will start with its R137bn rolling-stock renewal project, Mr Montana said. The project is being funded by the government as Prasa’s balance sheet could not carry the cost.

Given the decrepit state of Metrorail, which has not enjoyed substantive investment for at least 36 years, it was beyond the means of any city to support this fleet renewal and signalling upgrade programmes, Mr Montana said.

Cape Town would not take on a malfunctioning train service, Mr Herron said. "Those are the issues that will need to be understood. We have no intention to take on a system that is broken."