LETTER: Cape Town envious of Gautrain

Dr Seán Muller’s response to Jesse Harber’s article on the Gautrain raised for me a profound problem with the assessment of public works and institutions in SA (“Gautrain vanity project”, September 7). This is the prioritisation of financial return over almost any other facet of purpose.

Of all the most critical conditions contributing to the deterioration of urban structures, extremely weak access and movement, notably for working people, has and continues to erode quality of urban life, exacerbating joblessness, burdening infrastructural cost and other pathologies where healthcare entails exorbitant cost for the state service and individuals.

The Gautrain, hardly a major rail system by world measure (or indeed, set against the scale of the regional transport needs of Gauteng), could only be described as a “vanity project” by wilfully ignoring the reality of modern cities. All successful modern cities consider efficient mass transport non-negotiable conditions for their wellbeing and growth.

London, known as a “strong centre” city, has commissioned the new Elizabeth Line, costing billions of pounds, to add to the already vast network of underground rail supplemented by almost saturation bus and taxi networks. All routes join the outer, semi-regional periphery edges, by crossing through the centre.

As a typical world-class city, its ability to sustain world-class retail, entertainment, art and music, education, hospitals as well as working environments and millions of dwellings, depends on these rapid rail, bus and taxi networks, which are the lifeblood of an ever-expanding economy. Tourism feeds into the system naturally, without disruption, growing exponentially.

Johannesburg had a vibrant CBD encompassing regional services in medicine, education, business and finance, entertainment, music and the arts. In the 1960s, the building of the ring road created a “weak centre” city structure. First, a transport void formed inside the ring. Second, development of all easily accessible (by car) major motorway interchanges inevitably supplanted the old CBD centre, sucking out energy and vitality. The Sandton-Fourways zone is the largest. The loss of value in CBD property and consequent emasculation of city income must amount to near the trillion mark.

When the Gautrain was conceived — decades before the World Cup — it would, in extending south to Soweto, have begun a process of developing a “strong centre” for the Johannesburg city CBD. In my experience there were no “disreputable consultants”, nor was the government “flirting with high-speed solutions” to anything. The emphasis was on sustainability through enabling access and mass movement.

Apart from Johannesburg, anyone remembering the physical (leaving aside the political) dislocation of the two great cities of Gauteng, Pretoria from Johannesburg, can only have applauded the building of the Gautrain. Like all efficient high-speed city rail systems, values and development of peripheral and affected land have developed a regional logic and efficiency that should become a model for further expansion of the Gautrain system to embrace East Rand West Rand regions. Cape Town can only be deeply envious of its continued function.

But let’s be clear, more opinions like Muller’s and we will find the Gautrain falling into the same trap of marginal maintenance and replacement dereliction that has destroyed existing rail systems, not to mention Eskom, over the whole country.

Rod Lloyd 
Newlands, Cape Town

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