LETTER: Cape Town must act on rail services

Jacques Moolman of the Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry correctly protests against the unacceptable partial collapse of commuter train services in Cape Town. (“Why is CT’s municipality stopped from fixing rail system mess?", August 3).

However, his proposal that the city take over these services also has problems. First, how can we believe that Cape Town could run the metro train services when it has failed for over a year to restore its own MyCiTi bus service from Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain to Cape Town? Surely we must see it get its own service up and running before trying to take over the railways from the state?

Second, no-one would consider Paarl and Stellenbosch to be suburbs of Cape Town. But daily commuter trains ferry thousands of workers from these two municipalities to work in Cape Town each day. Would there be legal problems in one municipality running services inside another?

Third, Moolman reports that the National Treasury has stopped the city from funding a study on such proposals. But if the city is able to help the railways there is more than one thing it can do without the need for a funded study. For a start, it can bring back its Copperheads squad to raid scrap metal dealers’ yards to search for stolen copper cables.

The city needs no-one’s permission to increase its law enforcement staff and buy drones with thermal cameras to patrol, from the outside periphery, railway lines throughout the metro. These would alert police to copper and other thieving, squatting and other illegal activities.

Keith Gottschalk, Claremont

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