Tantalisingly close to completion, the Gautrain is already boosting business

With expectations that the entire project should be complete and ready for operation by June or July 2011, the civil engineering work on the Gautrain is very close to completion.

The recent milestone of one million passengers recorded since the first phase of the project opened immediately prior to the Fifa Soccer World Cup has shown that this enterprise is not the white elephant some sceptics predicted it would be.

Speaking at a press briefing on 21 October 2010, project chief executive officer Jack van der Merwe emphasised that the success of the development could not really be gauged until the Gautrain was fully operational.

Once this has been achieved, it is expected that the million passenger mark will be reached every eight to 10 days.

He pointed to the criticisms of the Gautrain bus service. At present, the majority of local passengers are still using their own vehicles to get to the train stations and do not have a pressing need to use the bus service. This will change once the northern section of the line is operational.

Commuters from Pretoria and further afield will need the buses to get them to their destinations in Johannesburg or Sandton, and the same would apply to Johannesburg users travelling north.

The project has been a massive undertaking, and its commissioning in a few months’ time will be the culmination of over 10 years of vision, effort, negotiation and, finally, construction work.

But it cannot be viewed as a single project – rather a myriad of projects, from the planning and co-ordination of main and subcontractors to the scheduling of traffic interruptions (particularly in the Sandton area); from the running of an operation while large sections are still under construction to the handling of suggestions and complaints by travellers.

All these have had to be coalesced to meet a single objective – to get passengers from point A to point B quickly, safely and
on schedule.

From a social and economic point of view, the Gautrain has had – and will continue to have – a huge impact on the provincial landscape.

When first mooted, the fear raised by many people whose homes or businesses were within sight and earshot of the Gautrain stations was that property prices would plummet. But the exact opposite has become the case, as proximity to the stations has had the effect of enhancing property values, and “Close to Gautrain station” is likely to be a selling point in property advertisements in years to come.

This latter point is supported by the fact that OR Tambo International Airport is now punting itself as a convenient shopping district, a mere 15 minutes from Sandton – a feat that can only be achieved via the Gautrain.

This factor alone seems to justify embarking on a project that, at its peak, was making disbursements of R30 million per hour and employing up to 1 500 workers at all levels on any given day.

It requires a bit of vision to see how the transport system affects the local economy, but perhaps the best example is the fact that Old Mutual was willing to pay the Gautrain Joint Venture Company a hefty (undisclosed) amount of money to persuade them to move the site of the Midrand station development to the immediate vicinity of a multipurpose development it had planned.

The adjacent station, with its commuter traffic, was seen by Old Mutual as a huge potential market, and it pursued the opportunity with vigour.

Another aspect of the Gautrain that requires a bit of vision and some artistic imagination is the architectural design of the stations themselves.

From the outset, they have had an aesthetic appeal and were certainly not the blight on the landscape they could
have been.

However, it is only once the fact that their design was inspired by the acacia thorn tree has been explained that one can (with an enthusiastic stretch of the imagination) see why they have a tendency to blend with their surroundings.

On the northern section of the line, the stations at Pretoria, Hatfield, Centurion and Midrand are looking very close to being operational.

The major construction work is complete and the sites are ready for the electrical, electronic and aesthetic touches to be added before final testing and the cutting of ceremonial ribbons.

Throughout the project, personal safety of all site personnel has been a major focus.

Hatfield station, for example, has been the recipient of almost two million man hours of work – and it has not had a single delay due to injury. This record is all the more impressive when one considers the height of the 2 400-car parkade, the abundance of heavy trucking and construction machinery working in a very restricted area, the excavations and the spaghetti of electrical cables for power tools.

The other stations can boast of the same type of safety achievements and, as Keith Lane, the site engineer at Pretoria station, quipped: “We haven’t killed anyone yet.”

But perhaps the jewel of the entire system will be the Centurion station. It has been designed with facilities to cater for 1 900 cars and efficient bus stops as well as drop-and-go (or “kiss-and-ride”, as this is becoming more commonly known) areas that make it very attractive to commuters.

It is here that the “acacia” design is most immediately apparent, and the overall look and feel of the site is pleasing.

But will it all work?

Although there is no deadline dependency between Gautrain and the planned freeway improvement and tolling plans of the South African National Roads Agency Limited, the economics of travel between Pretoria and Joburg (with additional costs associated with toll roads) make travelling by train and commuting to a final destination by bus increasingly attractive.

However, and perhaps more poignantly, the looming fossil fuel crisis (that Van der Merwe predicts will have a major impact within our lifetime) is making train transport increasingly important. There is simply no way that goods can continue to be transported over long distances by road as fuel costs push up the price.

The train, which began as a revolutionary transport method in the 19th century, and which has endured a Cinderella status of late, will come back into its own, and will once again be the backbone of the economics of goods and passenger transport.

How reliable it is, will be determined by the reliability of the electricity supply, which itself needs to find alternative and sustainable sources of fuel.

A blackout on the day before Van der Merwe displayed the state of progress of the project only serves to emphasise this area of concern.

Although no Gautrain passenger was left stranded, the inconvenience of not being able to reach a destination on time needs to be addressed, particularly as the Gautrain currently serves OR Tambo Airport as a major destination.

Another concern is personal safety. The Gautrain project has taken this very seriously and there is literally no place to hide.

From the time a commuter swipes his or her card at the entrance to a station until he/she leaves the destination station, a record of that movement is kept either electronically or on camera, so it is certainly much safer than any other form of transport.

From the point of view of safe, reliable and convenient transport in Gauteng, Gautrain seems to be headed in the
right direction. 

John Doolan