The City of Cape Town welcomes the improvement measures announced by Metrorail, at a media briefing earlier this week. Rail is viewed as the backbone of public transport in Cape Town and plays an important role in supporting economic development and social inclusion. It is considered a critical building block in the local and regional economy.
“The City hosted a Rail Summit in February this year and a number of operational and commuter-focused issues were identified as requiring urgent intervention. These have formed the basis of on-going engagements between the City and Metrorail. The City is committed to assisting and supporting Metrorail implement the necessary measures to improve the commuters’ overall public transport experience. We will support Metrorail and Prasa in their efforts in this ambitious plan of action as it is essential to the long-term viability of the commuter-rail service and of the City’s integrated transport solution,” said Councilor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee Member for Transport
“We have already held many fruitful and positive discussions with the CEO of Metrorail and its regional management to find ways to work together and assist Metrorail. All of these discussions have been done with the goal of improving the overall public transport environment in the City,” said Councilor Herron.
Some of the initiatives that the City of Cape Town is working jointly with Metrorail include:
- operations to remove graffiti from Metrorail and surrounding infrastructure
- improved safety and security and access control to Metrorail stations
- an integrated public transport ticketing system
- integrated timetabling and joint, coordinated communication
- management of informal settlement encroachment on rail reserves
- extending the existing CCTV network, and integrating its monitoring with City’s Transport Management Control Centre
The City welcomes Metrorail’s plans to attend to a number of burning issues in the immediate future including:
- to protect signal points by better protecting them against vandalism
- an accelerated train window replacement programme
- the rolling stock refurbishment programme
- to implement a platform marshals project and a closed door programme to improve commuter safety
- to ensure a greater focus on customer service (including new staff uniforms with name tags)
The City also welcomes the progress being made by Metrorail/Prasa to:
- acquire new signaling systems
- to acquire 40 new train sets for the Western Cape by 2015
“We are working as hard as we can, and as prudently as possible, with all the public transport stakeholders in Cape Town to put the current fragmented and often inconvenient public transport system behind us and to usher in a fully functional public transport service that will support economic and social inclusion and provide convenient and enhanced affordable mobility,” said Mayoral Committee Member for Transport, Roads and Stormwater, Councillor Brett Herron.
