Monorail to link Joburg, Soweto
17 May 2007
If all goes to plan, waiting in long queues for public transport and getting stuck in traffic will soon be a thing of the past for Sowetan commuters – It will have its own monorail by 2009, transporting people between the township and Johannesburg's city centre.
A Malaysian consortium, Newcyc, is set to build a R12-billion monorail system linking Soweto and Joburg, over the next two years. The project will be fully funded by the company, which will source all infrastructure and rolling stock in the province by establishing a company for this purpose.
Engineering News reports this week that the monorail will carry an estimated 1.5-million passengers per day and create around 5 000 jobs during the construction phase.
Monorails are light trains with rubber wheels that run on overhead concrete beams. These rest on six-metre high pillars, usually built in the centre median of road carriageways. They run on electricity or solar powered batteries
and can carry up to 40 000 passengers an hour during peak time.
The Gauteng provincial government and the Malaysian company signed a deal for the construction of the hybrid monorail carrier and related infrastructure along the corridor, such as shopping malls and residential areas, on 16 May at the Southern Sun Hotel in Sandton.
"We are very excited about this initiative. People in Gauteng will have a choice of public transport. This is fully supported by the taxi industry; they understand that this is not about competition," said provincial Transport Minister Ignatius Jacobs.
Provincial Finance Minister, Paul Mashatile, said the monorail was intended to complement existing motor transport and not to compete with it.
"We are not competing with anyone in the public transport industry. The problem is people queue for three to four hours for transport. We want to move people efficiently, safely and in an affordable way.
By 2009, no-one from Soweto should
have to wait more than 15 minutes for transport," Mashatile said.
Business Day reports this week that the provincial government is in negotiations with the local taxi industry, so they can be included in a feeder system that will carry commuters to and from the monorail stations.
"The National Taxi Alliance (NTA) has endorsed the project and we are in talks with them about the system," Jacobs told Business Day.
Construction work on the 44,7km long monorail, which will have 39 stations, is expected to start in September and should be completed by 2009.
"The monorail will [turn] Soweto into a modern city. People will travel between Soweto and Joburg for only R10," said Newcyc chief executive, Jeyakumar Varathan.
Several other countries use the monorail system, including Malaysia, Japan, the United States and Australia.
"Monorail has been tested before and we have no doubt that it will succeed in Joburg. It is very safe and we've had no fatalities
and accidents for over 100 years," Varathan said.
"We are ready to start with construction but between now and September we have to find out what's underneath where we are going to dig."
Mashatile said it was highly unlikely that they would move people during the construction but if it had to happen they would be compensated accordingly.
SouthAfrica.info reporter and City of Johannesburg
| 
