Gautrain

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telkomsuig

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kilps said:
Weren't there some concerns about it going through private property? Ah well - doesn't effect me here in Cape Town :)
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No just some old farts in PTA wanting the train to go underground and not past their properties...
 
Affected property owners will be compensated after their properties had been evaluated.
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I'd love to know how they are going to convince Joburg motorists that they don't need to use their cars to go to work !

I'm sure they have a Park 'n Ride plan in there somewhere, if they don't, DOPE !

Trying to seperate a Joburg motorist from their beloved car and *ick* go on public transport is like trying to get liquid-duck to post something useful.

This being South Africa, I'm fairly sure the cost of tickets is going to be too high - after all, we've got a culture of corporate ripoff artistry to maintain !
We can't be having a fair pricing structure, that would just put it out of sorts with our banks, telecoms, food prices and petrol cost.

But let me be optimistic and assume that the ticket price is fair and joburg motorists can be convinced to leave their cars in parking lots close to their respective homes and hop on the Gautrain to work - how many trains will it take to get, hmm, 50 000 people to their destinations ? (I have no idea what the figures would be)
Assuming the train can carry 500 people, 50 trains in the morning from Pretoria and 50 from joburg, starting at 5.30am in the morning they would need to run every 5 minutes.

Heck, I don't know, maybe I'm completely missing the point of all this, but wouldn't it be a better idea to just add an extra 3 lanes onto each side of the highway and make one of them a special buses only lane ?
 
telkomsuig said:
No just some old farts in PTA wanting the train to go underground and not past their properties...
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I wouldn't look at it that way, probably they have some very nice properties and now theres a huge train going past every day! Would you like that? Why not just put the thing right next to the road? I symithise with them - a bit like AgriBEE (if you know what I am talking about, what a joke) :mad:
 
yes...sorry for them :)

But cool it does look - are they not gonna be making a new type of train for us for the worldcup 2010

I heard it on the radio a while back
 
kilps said:
I wouldn't look at it that way, probably they have some very nice properties and now theres a huge train going past every day! Would you like that? Why not just put the thing right next to the road? I symithise with them - a bit like AgriBEE (if you know what I am talking about, what a joke) :mad:
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Well if the train is not built a new 10 lane highway with diesel trucks zooming past and the taxis hooting all night might keep them happy....

Thing is the N1 can't cope i think the train is the better of two evils....
 
bb_matt said:
I'd love to know how they are going to convince Joburg motorists that they don't need to use their cars to go to work !
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I think good marketing could help solve this problem; in France, when they introduced the high-speed trains, they had e.g. an ad campaign "don't risk driving", touting the safety benefits of using the train vs. driving, apparently
that was quite effective.

And quite frankly, driving that route in rush hour every day really SUCKS. The very idea that someone might claim to like it just because they 'like their car' etc. actually seems stupid, if you think about it. Hopefully the marketers will take advantage of this point. Further, traffic on the highway between Pta and Joburg is growing at 7% a year, so what's already a horrific/slow/dangerous etc. commute is only going to get worse - hopefully that alone will push a lot of people to use it. Just imagine, by the time the Gautrain is ready in 2010, there will already be over 30% more traffic on that route than there is now.

They will have to make sure the feeder networks are implemented well though. This I'm not sure about, considering that those running the bus network in Pretoria obviously have no vision whatsoever in terms of trying to create a 'public transport use' culture (e.g. you can't even download the bus timetable online - you have to go into town to fetch it - how hard would it be to put it online FFS. <sarcasm>Obviously they don't want people to use the busses.</sarcasm>)

I think the success of the Gautrain will ultimately boil down to whether or not (a) they market it well and (b) those in charge have the vision to do so.

The price of petrol is also likely to just keep on going up, so maybe that will also help push people towards more economical public transport. (In fact countries that don't create good public transport infrastructures now are probably going to have a much harder time adapting when oil runs out in 40 years or so.) I hope Gautrain is only the start of a modernised public rail transport infrastructure in SA. If they can later start making the network bigger, then the idea of using it will become even more attractive (because travellers can reach more points - like the subways overseas), and there might be a positive knock-on effect ('critical mass') where they build a proper rail network.
 
I think a train would be a great idea as long as they can keep the operating costs reasonable and ensure good safety and cleanliness on the trains. I remember using metrorail in durban some time back and it is not exactly the sort of thing I would want to swap my car for. It was pretty cheap however.

Perhaps a good train system would have a help reduce car and car related running costs such as insurance.

The downside to trains that I found was that they stopped a lot. So a trip that would take 15 minutes in a car would take three times as long by train, but then again this was metrorail, their trains don't really move that fast.
 
I doubt if it would save much time.

My offices are in Centurion, about 5 km from the proposed station.

If I assume that there is acceptable feeder public transport (not the super taxi-risk your life and get your clothes dirty sardine can type), I will have to go out the office and WAIT for such transport. Then of to the station and WAIT for the next train. Go by train to my destination and WAIT for feeder transport, take the feeder transport to the spot closest to my final destination and walk the last few street blocks.

My guess is that the Gautrain will be more expensive and in effect more time consuming than going by car from my offices to my clients.
 
I'd rather get a small scooter to go to the office than use a train.
30-45 kms on a liter.
 
kaspass - that's why I think it will be difficult to convince joburgers who commute by car to work to switch.

Amongst those who have been working in offices for a number of years and have been driving to work, the culture of public transport just is alien to them - the idea of not having their car available at all times to go where they want is not something they like thinking about.

For your average 8 to 5 office worker, it would only be an option if it saved cash.

For those people who have a few meetings at clients every week it's not going to work.
Obviously for those on the road all the time, it'll never be an option.

The only way the feeder situation will work is if they put light guage rail lines from key areas in suburbs - the website indicates this.
For instance, Cresta is one of the "feeder" points - the car park there could be converted, but as for a light guage railway, the only possible route would be all the way along republic and onto William nichol - that is NEVER going to happen, the cost and disruption would be astronomical. It would have to be a monorail going above the road.

That leaves the option of buses or driving to a park and ride.

So, you work in Midrand or Pretoria and live near Cresta.

First you have to drive from Cresta to Sandton - you would have to leave at 6am in the morning to avoid the worst traffic, arriving at the station in Sandton at 6.25am
The train would leave at 6.30am and you'd be in Midrand at 7.00am, an hour early for work.

Or, you leave home at 7am, it takes you an hour to get to Sandton and the station, so you get there at 8am, the train leaves at 8am and you get to Midrand at 8.30am and still need to get to the office.

None of this computes at all.

The only people who are going to benefit are those that live within 5km of the stations.

Ok, so lets assume that they add an extra lane all the way along Republic and William Nichol for special feeder buses - that's possible, expensive, but possible. But now you have to pay not only for your return train fare to Midrand/Pretoria, but also for the bus journery.

I can't see it working, I really can't.

A person just going from Cresta to Midrand and back 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month would use R400 of petrol.

R400 / 25 days = R16 a day in bus/train fares just to make it even with the cost of going by car.

They would have to make it R10 for anyone to even consider it an option, which is just not feasible.
 
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I think the biggest market initially will be the pta to jhb crowd... for those people there will be a considerable time and stress saving. Also we have a very similar culture compared to LA and the best way to force people to use public transport is to make payment for inner city parking expensive and also offer incentives to companies to provide shuttle services to and from the stations...

The first step is always the most difficult but I think in the longer run too much money will be spent on this not to make it work...
 
Me agree's.
For it to work it's going to have to be about R5 a day both ways.

My domestic pays R16.00 a day on taxi fares (R8 each way), and the train has got to beat that price considerably, cos she'll still have to fork out another R5 to get from the station to a place close to my home.
 
hahaha - you've gotta be kidding right ?

Nothing wrong with that scooter, except for the fact that you wouldn't last 10 minutes in joburg rush hour traffic on it !

"Gomoto - your ride to freedom, in hospital !"

****, that thing is so underpowered, there's no ways you'd get yourself out of any tricky situation that Bikers often find themselves in - I've been told (I'm not a biker myself), that engine power is what gets bikers out of stum a lot of the time - the kinda **** that motorists who are mor0ns cause all the time (e.g blind spot)
 
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