Rod Lloyd’s response to Dr Seán Muller’s letter, which was in turn responding to Jesse Harber’s article on the transport-induced decline of the Johannesburg CBD, deserves comment and some correction, in particular his denial that the Gautrain was a “vanity project”, and stating that it was conceived “decades before the World Cup” (“Cape Town envious of Gautrain”, September 12).
Back then SA Railways (like Eskom and the SA Post Office) may have been a lumbering behemoth, but it had superb engineers and managers who would certainly have considered connecting Johannesburg and the south directly to Pretoria instead of relying on the historical Germiston route. It was in fact only a few years before the World Cup that the “Gautrain” was invented as a money generating project (as Lloyd must admit in the light of his opening remarks).
This was confirmed by the choice for it (against expert advice) of the standard gauge instead of the union gauge, and off-the-shelf rolling stock from abroad, which ruled out any meaningful connectivity with the existing network (this is of course is one reason it was and remains a “vanity project”, with the bulk of its revenue from the wealthy elite of Rosebank, Sandton and so on, most of them frequent flyers).
Lloyd sees the quality of urban life as being important mainly to “working people”. New Yorkers would disagree, and for many years the Johannesburg CBD and Park Station areas (then well-served by trams) were home to the intelligentsia of the land. Johannesburg was indeed a “world-class city”. Happily however, even at this point in Johannesburg’s continuing decline it is conceivable that the accolade could be restored by capital investment to ameliorate the current environment crisis due to ever-increasing road traffic, the causes of which Lloyd well describes.
Looking at a street map of Johannesburg one cannot but be struck by the logic of a rail link between Westgate and Park stations, and the fact that over the years many studies must have been made of the cost/feasibility of such a link, initially by SA Railways and more recently by the Gauteng transport department, Gautrain Agency, Prasa and so on. If the employment opportunities generated by what is pretty much a “shovel-ready” regenerative infrastructure project are taken into account it warrants rapid implementation.
Moreover, it would be spectacular and nationally important and could well serve as the centrepiece of the national government’s capital spending programme. Doubtless the World Bank/IMF would be sympathetic. Costs could be minimised by running single (union gauge) lines down the centres of Sauer and Rissik streets, and consideration could be given to the modification of the track in the Park Station-Rosebank tunnel to carry Prasa trains further north.
By including the taxi industry in some ownership structure, its co-operation could conceivably be won over.
Johann Siebert
Via email
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