By Lucille Davie
CONSTRUCTION of the Johannesburg-Pretoria Gautrain will begin in mid-2005 and in the process some 98 000 jobs will be created, including 2 000 permanent jobs when the train starts running.
So says Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa in his address at the opening of the provincial legislature on Monday, adding that the express train will carry its first passengers in 2009, a year earlier than originally planned.
"The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link remains firmly on track . . . By November this year we will appoint the preferred bidder out of the two short-listed consortia and conclude financial negotiations by April 2005. Construction will start soon thereafter. By 2009 the train will be carrying passengers!"
This will leave time for fine-tuning before South Africa hosts the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Of the total, 57 000 jobs will be created in the construction phase and 39 000 in the infrastructure development phase.
The 80km Gautrain, running between Johannesburg and Pretoria, with a line to the Johannesburg International Airport, will cost R7,5-billion, and was first proposed in 2000 by Shilowa, and became known as the "Shilowa Express". The train will ease congestion of more than 300 000 cars per day between the two principal cities.
Two final construction bidders were named in May 2002. Their proposals are being evaluated by the Gautrain Project Evaluation Committee. The companies, which were chosen from 10 submissions, are Bombela Consortium and Gauliwe Consortium.
The draft EIA was completed in October 2002, together with the Heritage Impact Assessment. After an extensive public consultation process - which involved revisions to the route being suggested and the province approving most of them - the final EIA was submitted in April 2003.
Residents of Sandton and Marlboro were particularly concerned that the route would encroach on some of their only green lungs, and asked that the train run underground at these points. These suggestions, together with eight of 10 received, were approved.
A major obstacle is still posed by the residents' association of the suburb of Muckleneuk, in Pretoria. The residents want tunnelling through the suburb instead of surface lines.
"The cost of this will be R450-million," says Gautrain spokesperson Barbara Jensen, "an unacceptable cost."
She adds: "We are offering to put mitigation measures in place, to lessen the noise and other factors, at a cost of R18-million."
The residents are taking the matter to court. While not willing to speculate on the outcome of the case, Jensen says it will not delay construction.
Mitigation measures take into account the biophysical environment - flora, fauna, surface water and air quality - and the socio-economic considerations, such as noise, vibration, traffic, archaeology and heritage aspects.
This document approved the Gautrain project and the proposed route, based on certain conditions. Several appeals were lodged within the 30 days set aside for public reaction, and in April 2004 the amended RoD was produced, following a consideration of the appeals submitted. The amended RoD has since been authorised by the provincial MEC, together with the recommended route alignments of the original RoD.
The route starts at Park Station in the Joburg CBD and then runs through Rosebank, Sandton, Marlboro, from where a line goes east to the airport. It then moves north to Midrand, then Centurion, Pretoria, and finally, Hatfield. Some 650 homes will be expropriated to make way for the Gautrain.
The Gautrain will take 15 minutes to reach the airport from Sandton and 35 minutes - at 160km/h - to travel from Johannesburg to Pretoria. A return trip will cost 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.
- 104 000 passengers per day are estimated to travel on Gautrain
- Approximately 78 new commuter rail coaches will be manufactured
- Approximately 250 new bus coaches will be used
- 3,6 million train kilometres and 674 million passenger kilometres will be travelled per year
- 10,6 million bus kilometres will be travelled per year
- There will be a train at least every 10 minutes during the peak time at stations between Johannesburg and Tshwane.
- 260 000 concrete sleepers will be manufactured for use in the track
- 20 000 tons of steel will be required to manufacture the steel rails
- 112 000 mē of bridges and viaduct structures will be constructed
- More than 9 000 new parking bays will be required
- 65 road intersections in the vicinity of stations will be upgraded
- 48 000 jobs will be created during construction
- 1 200 permanent jobs will be created once in operation
- More than 1 200 CCTV cameras will be used on the system
- In preparing the site for construction more that 200 hectares of land will be cleared.
- During construction approximately 6.7 million cubic metres of earth will be moved around and reworked to form the basis for the new rail line.
- The new Gautrain service will run on a 1 435 mm gauge rail track which is wider than the current RSA gauge rail track of 1 065 mm. This wider gauge is the predominant gauge used worldwide and will allow the Gautrain higher speeds at high levels of comfort and safety. It also allows access to modern state of the art technology at the lowest cost.
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