Francesca Villette
NEARLY 1 000 trains, a quarter of Metrorail’s scheduling, were delayed in the past week because of an increase in vandalism, obsolete infrastructure and load shedding.
Metrorail spokesperson Riana Scott said that of the 4 091 trains that were on the tracks between last Thursday and this Wednesday, 938 were delayed, some for up to two hours.
And yesterday 47 trains were delayed because of cable theft and faulty track circuits at a number of stations across the city, bringing the overall total of delayed trains since last Thursday to 985.
Metrorail also has to deal with cancelled trains.
Train punctuality varied between 74 and 80 percent, falling short of their targeted 85 percent, Scott said.
The delays have affected thousands of the 688 000 people who rely on the trains daily.
Scott said cancellations were due to vandalism, technical difficulties and operational defects, while freight trains breaking down on the tracks also impacted on the rail service, as did load shedding.
Defects could be something as seemingly insignificant as a light bulb stolen from a signalling system to components not working and sheer vandalism.
Scott said she could not immediately provide the Cape Times with the cost of vandalism to the service.
Metrorail spent R200 million on maintenance during the past financial year, Scott said.
When a freight train had a breakdown, Transnet sent out specialist engineers to repair the train and Scott said this impacted on their ability to deliver their service.
She said a number of freight trains had broken down this week.
Scott said load shedding affected 28 trains this week and even though Metrorail and Eskom had an agreement that electricity supply for trains would only be cut as a last resort, station and signal power supply were affected by load shedding.
Commuters should expect, and prepare for, longer journeys during power outages, Scott said.
On Tuesday, load shedding resulted in a Wellington-bound train arriving two hours late.
It was scheduled to get to Wellington at 8pm and instead rolled into the station at 10pm, leaving commuters scrambling in the dark.
Ilona Prinsloo ended up crawling through a hole made in barbed wire and crossing an abandoned field at 9pm when her train to Brackenfell stopped between stations.
She has been a Metrorail commuter since 1995 and said over the last year the service had “deteriorated shockingly”.
“As a woman, it’s even more scary and dangerous to be in a situation where the train stops unexpectedly for hours on end.
When you are stuck, you start imagining the most horrific scenes,” Prinsloo said.
Transport Minister Dipuo Peters previously said the government was investing R172.3 billion over the next 10 years to improve the country’s railway system, of which R51bn had already been invested in the manufacture of 3 600 passenger coaches.
The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), of which Metrorail is a subsidiary, has invested R7bn to ensure national trains’ signalling systems work effectively.
R2.8bn of this money would be used in the Western Cape, it said.