Gautrain’s new cheap tickets twice as expensive as South Africa’s biggest rail service

An analysis by MyBroadband shows that Gautrain’s new discounted products for lower-income households cost about twice the most expensive fares on the country’s biggest commuter rail service.

For many years, the Automobile Association of South Africa has criticised the Gautrain for costing the taxpayers billions of rand and not being affordable for commuters who cannot afford to travel by car.

While high tariffs put the Gautrain out of reach of many of the province’s residents, the service relies on government subsidies to stay afloat.

In the 2024/2025 financial year, the government paid the Gautrain concessionaire Bombela R2.79 billion as a Patronage Guarantee to account for the shortfall between revenue and costs.

The biggest commuter rail service in the country — the Prasa-operated Metrorail — is much more affordable and carries many more passengers than Gautrain.

While Metrorail’s infrastructure has deteriorated substantially in recent years, it still carries around 1.7 million passengers per weekday, whereas the Gautrain has an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 daily users.

However, Metrorail’s fares are only possible due to a significant taxpayer-funded public transport subsidy, which is budgeted at R6.74 billion in the current financial year.

Both the Metrorail and Gautrain boast economic benefits. The former ensures millions of people, many who don’t have limited means of transport, can get to work daily.

Similarly, the Gautrain helps alleviate traffic on the N1 freeway between Johannesburg and Pretoria and carries thousands of people who make significant economic contributions to and from work every day.

We compared Gautrain’s regular and KlevaMova pricing with Metrorail. Metrorail fares also has single, return, weekly, and monthly tickets and three fare categories — regular, MetroPlus, and MetroPlus Express.

Fares are grouped according to the distance between starting and ending stations. Trips covering between 1km and 10km are the most affordable, and those over 100km are the most expensive.

Prices range from as low as R7.50 for a single trip on the standard Metrorail fare between stations 10km or less apart and R620 for a monthly MetroPlus Express product for trips over 100km.

The Gautrain has different fares that vary based on the distance between the starting and ending station.

The most affordable single-trip ticket on the Gautrain costs R38 and applies to only the shortest-distance trips.

The most expensive fare is the monthly ticket of R4,114 for trips between the two furthest stations — Hatfield station in Pretoria and Park station in Johannesburg.

The KlevaMova 50% discount only applies to return, weekly, and monthly tickets.

As the Gautrain is considered to be a more premium service, we compared its prices with the most expensive MetroPlus Express product.

Overall, we found that return and weekly Gautrain tickets cost nearly four times the MetroPlus Express fares for similar distances, while the monthly tickets cost about five to six times as much.

KlevaMova tickets cost around double the MetroPlus Express fare for return and weekly tickets covering similar distances, and are three times more expensive for monthly tickets.

The first table below compares the prices of Metrorail and Gautrain tickets for five distance categories. The second provides a breakdown of what Gautrain routes would fall under each of Metrorail’s distance categories.