The infrastructure is there. It's just that we're putting in a new train rather than an old train. We’ve also been requested to resuscitate the line to East London – Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi.
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Thus far we’ve met with the executive council of the cabinet of Limpopo, and the two cabinets have also presented documents to their own meetings, and all the meetings approved the project. PANYAZI LESUFI: It’s a ‘train for all’, if I have to put it that way, because it’s also going to carry goods between the two provinces. So to us it’s very, very important. Also passengers, which is very important – whoever wants to [use it] – but it will also obviously be a train that will ferry tourists who might want to visit the two provinces.
RYK VAN NIEKERK: There will be a big focus on costs, because Polokwane is 250 kilometres from Pretoria and it will take a significant investment in infrastructure to build this project. Is there any indication of what this project will cost, and how it’ll be financed?The railway line is there, so we’re not digging afresh. The signals are there. We’re not putting new signals, just putting new technology there.
RYK VAN NIEKERK: But it’ll be a public-private partnership, I believe. So it won’t be managed by Transnet or Prasa [Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa], for example? So it’s quicker, it’s cheaper and [will] cut lots of time. The only thing that we need, as I say, is a new technology and the building of these trains, together with the building of the train stations. But the infrastructure is there already. It is not something that we need to dig or need to start afresh.
Come the beginning of 2015 – we had a concession with a French institution to build the train, to operate the train and to transfer it – so come the beginning of 2015, they would transfer everything to us. So we will make that decision come the time closer … because we are left with only two years until this huge asset now belongs to South Africans, not to any other person.
We are now experienced, knowledgeable, and we will change things. So [with] the new train between Johannesburg and Polokwane, the challenges that we had with Gautrain will be really minimised, because we’ve learned and we know what needs to be done, and what needs to be left out. RYK VAN NIEKERK: Are there plans to also develop rail links between Gauteng and KZN and Cape Town, for example? Maybe not so much focused on freight but on passengers. We have three of our major motor industries. They have [told] us that they don’t want to use the Durban harbour. It is overloaded and it delays.They really believe that it makes economic sense. We have approached Transnet and Transnet has agreed.
You are right, I saw the comments on social media. It’s people who can criticise even Shakespeare, saying Romeo and Juliet didn’t happen. But they were not Shakespeare, because they are lazy to read and [to] go think.
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