Thousands of commuters will have to wait for at least another month to board passenger trains after Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula said the state rail agency Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was not ready to operate fully.
Mbalula on Saturday provided details of public transport operations and travel during alert level 3 of the national lockdown, which starts on Monday.
“Through our ongoing engagements and evaluation of Prasa’s state of readiness, we have concluded that Prasa is not ready to resume with the Metrorail commuter service,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula said his department will continue to work closely with Prasa in assessing each line and put measures in place to achieve an acceptable level of readiness. Prasa will continue with the maintenance, servicing and testing of its fleet and further sanitise and disinfect its stations and hubs and on completion will announce the resumption of its services.
Mbalula said Prasa revised its target of resuming operations to July 1 and only in four routes between - Pretoria to Pienaarspoort, Cape Town to Simon’s Town, East London to Berlin and Port Elizabeth to Uitenhage.
However, long-distance trains will remain prohibited.
Prasa subsidiary Metrorail has less than 700000 passenger trips per weekday while it is capable of transporting between 2.5 and three million passengers daily once its service capacity has been restored.
Mbalula also announced the lifting of time restrictions on all road-based public transport modes but capacity limits will remain - minibus-taxis remain at 70 percent loading capacity, buses have a 50 percent maximum loading capacity and must take into account standing passengers and e-hailing, metered taxis, shuttle, chauffeur and charter services remain at 50 percent.
Domestic business air travel will resume tomorrow, with airlines allowed to fly between Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban subject to adherence to strict health protocol.
In terms of the directions issued by Mbalula, domestic passenger air travel is not permitted for recreational, leisure or tourism purposes.
He stated that the limited domestic air travel between OR Tambo, Cape Town and King Shaka international airports will strictly be for business purposes and will also be subject to restrictions on the number of flights a day.
Ailing national carrier SAA cancelled all its domestic flights when the national lockdown was declared from March 27 while another troubled state-owned regional airline SA Express was grounded 10 days earlier after being placed under business rescue in February by the South Gauteng High Court.
Other private-owned domestic and regional airlines were also grounded after the declaration of the lockdown by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
According to Mbalula, the decision to permit limited domestic travel was also informed by current low infection rate in the inland provinces and the fact that all three airports had port health capacity.