By Lucille Davie
THE Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) has made a call to halt plans for the high-speed Gautrain between Johannesburg and Pretoria. The chamber has also made a request for further research into the feasibility of the multi-billion rand project, as a solution to the problem of traffic congestion between the two cities.
JCCI CEO, Marius de Jager, says: "… in the course of the Chamber's consultations with a range of stakeholders, transport experts, and professional associations, a number of concerns were identified".
The chamber's concerns are wide-ranging and go to the heart of the project which, it is hoped, will relieve the congestion of some 300 000 passengers each week travelling between Gauteng's two biggest cities, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The findings of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) have been available for viewing since September last year, and a number of open meetings have been held to receive feedback from the people most affected by the proposed route, which goes through a number of Johannesburg suburbs, mostly underground. Some 650 homes will have to be expropriated to make way for the train.
Along with the initial investment of R7.5-billion, the JCCI is concerned that the "value-for-money benefit needs to be further explored". De Jager suggests that Parliament may be concerned at this level of expenditure. "Parliament itself should take an interest in the expenditure in excess of R7.5-billion in initial outlay, plus ongoing subsidies of about R300-million annually."
De Jager has further worries in this regard. Attracting 60 000 commuters assumes that car-loving South Africans are readily going to abandon their convenient means of transport to use public transport. He questions the "demand forecasting models" of Bohlweki Environmental, the company that has undertaken the EIA, saying there is "no hard data" to support their claims that converting motorists to public transport is possible. Rather, he claims, it is "not realistically achievable".
Jack van der Merwe, the Gautrain project leader, speaking on SAfm on Wednesday morning, indicated that these "feeder systems" around the stations have been "designed in detail".
Commuters using the Ben Schoeman freeway between Johannesburg and Pretoria spend approximately three hours in total for the round trip, and van der Merwe hopes that the "cost and frustration" involved in this trip will motivate those commuters to take the train.
The Gautrain will have an offshoot from Sandton to the Johannesburg International Airport, which will take 15 minutes, whereas the trip between Johannesburg to Pretoria will take 35 minutes, travelling at 160km/h. The cost of the return trip will be between R15 and R25. There will be four underground stations and eight surface stations, and some 14 kilometres of underground track (in some places 80 metres down).
De Jager believes that "there are key features that require urgent examination beyond the purely physical environmental issues. A project of this magnitude should be subjected to rigorous due diligence investigation and not driven from a high political profile."
Van der Merwe indicated that the final feasibility study will be subject to a feasibility audit before tenders are called for. "There are a lot of checks and balances in the system," he said.
He concluded by saying that if the project is not feasible, it would not be undertaken.
