Rail: a Masterplan will only be ready by next year, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa says a national plan for rail will be ready by the end of next year. Archive photo: Sandiso Phaliso

• President Cyril Ramaphosa says a National Rail Masterplan that “will lay out the future” for rail in South Africa will be ready by the end of next year.
• This would cover passenger rail in our cities, including rapid rail, and high speed rail over long distances between centres.
• The City of Cape Town, which has been arguing for devolution of rail to allow the municipality to operate passenger trains, says it is disappointed at the delay.

The City of Cape Town says it is disappointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that a national rail master plan will only be complete by the end of 2025.

In his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said work was under way to develop a National Rail Masterplan that “will lay out the future” for rail in South Africa. He said rail was the backbone of transport and much progress had been made in restoring urban passenger rail to full service. “The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) has to date restored 31 out of 40 priority rail corridors back to operation. By March this year, 40 million passengers were using public trains, nearly three times more than the year before.”

“Work is underway to develop a National Rail Masterplan that will lay out the future for rail in South Africa. Among other things, the Masterplan will cover passenger rail in our cities, including rapid rail. It will also cover high speed rail over long distances between centres. The substantial work required to develop the Masterplan is expected to be completed by the end of next year,” said Ramaphosa in the newsletter.

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said in a statement on Tuesday that he doubted the plan would in fact be ready by the end of next year, judging from many deadlines that have not been met.

The City of Cape Town has for years been calling for the urgent devolution of rail to allow metros to operate passenger trains.

The City says it has an offer to Ramaphosa to form a joint working committee to fast-track rail devolution, “but has not received a response … despite a public commitment to do so”.

The City has previously stated that the national government’s failure to devolve rail will ultimately necessitate an intergovernmental dispute, but that Cape Town would much rather have the President accept an offer for a joint working committee.

Hill-Lewis is expected to meet national transport minister Barbara Creecy in Cape Town on Wednesday and will raise the City’s concerns in that meeting.

According to the City’s Rail Feasibility Study, functional passenger rail service would save lower income families in Cape Town R932-million a year and sustain 51,000 jobs in the metro.

Hill-Lewis said the “continued delays are not acceptable” to Capetonians.

He said the cabinet’s own 2022 National Rail Policy White Paper promised the delivery of a Devolution Strategy by 2023. Then in Parliament on 5 September 2023, the President “promised the strategy would be concluded and approved by 2024”.

“We were very worried back in February at the President’s failure to even mention the devolution strategy in [the State of the Nation Address], and now we hear of a new deadline of end-2025 for a ‘masterplan’.”

Hill-Lewis said the continuous delays showed it was “highly unlikely” that the Rail Masterplan will be ready by the end of next year.

Rob Quintas, mayco member for urban mobility, said the City was ready for the job-creating economic growth that comes with working trains.

“Lower income families are ready for more affordable public transport. This is why we expect extreme urgency from the national government to devolve rail for the City to run,” said Quintas.

In August, Quintas told GroundUp the national transport department was dragging its heels on the devolution of rail. He said the steering committee set up by the national department to discuss the devolution of rail to municipalities had only met once. The committee includes representatives of municipalities and provincial and national transport departments.

Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson for Ramaphosa, told GroundUp: “The National Rail Masterplan is a comprehensive and inclusive process that is going to serve the needs of the entire country, including non-urban areas. It goes beyond the needs of any particular Metro. It therefore requires an extensive consultation and broader participation process in order to be fully reflective of all stakeholder needs. Furthermore, the Masterplan will require a sustainable funding model both in the medium and long term. Hence, the anticipation that the work to complete the Masterplan will be realistically completed at the end of next year, as the President stated in his recent weekly newsletter.”

Mandla Majola, organising coordinator at commuter activist organisation #UnitedBehind, also expressed concerns about the delays in publishing the Masterplan. He said there was no clarity about how the plan would correspond with the forthcoming National Devolution Strategy, intended to outline how and when commuter rail services would be devolved to provinces or municipalities.

“We were informed, earlier this year, by officials in the Department of Transport that a draft strategy would be published in March 2024. Minister Creecy has undertaken to carry out public participation processes regarding this strategy by the end of 2024. No draft strategy or related public participation processes have yet been publicised,” Majola said.

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