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Johannesburg - As Gauteng moved towards greater integration, the future could see a single authority overseeing all rail transport within the province, Roads and Transports MEC Ismail Vadi says.
"That's a big policy decision. You can't have two separate rail systems in something like the Gauteng city region. More and more we are looking at integrating all these metropolitan cities," Vadi told News24 in an interview this week.
It was possible in the next 10 years, Gauteng could have five metropolitan municipalities, with the Municipal Demarcation Board considering the formation of the West Rand metropolitan municipality from the different municipalities in the region.
"The integrating factor is really the economy," Vadi says.
Due to all the metropolitan municipalities being so close to one another, residents moved between them daily, working in a different metro from the one they lived in. There was daily commuting across metropolitan boundaries, which were not "hard boundaries, they're very soft boundaries".
"You need a system that can accommodate a transport system that can take that reality into account," Vadi says.
"Therefore, we are going to have to integrate the two rail systems, both in terms of operations. I mean, they can have different technologies, but in terms of scheduling, timing, fare structures, [and] electronic ticketing [there would be integration]. A lot of the operational stuff has to be integrated and in terms of my vision, I see, over time, a single rail authority managing rail in this province."
At the moment, there was the Passenger Rail Association of SA and the Gautrain Management Agency. Over time, the province will have to evolve the institutional architecture for a single rail authority, with the same applying to the different bus rapid transit systems in the different metros.
"You can't have each metro having its own system. How do we get inter-connectivity? Integration I think is the key word and that's largely driven by this idea of a city region that we are developing, which is quite different from eThekweni or Cape Town," Vadi said.
"These are stand-alone metropolitan cities and they're quite influential and economically powerful. We've got three metropolitans. Their budgets are huge. 80% of our population reside in these three metros, so you got to take that into account."
National regulations state that rail can be devolved from Prasa to a metropolitan municipality. The question was, where did the authority lie with a train for example that started in Pretoria, went to Germistson, and then proceeded to Johannesburg.
"So do you have now three rail authorities managing one train every morning? It doesn't make sense. So, the legal framework will also have to be amended to take into account that Gauteng does have a distinctive and unique character, unlike other metropolitan municipalities," Vadi says.
"And therefore, the integration will have to take place and will have to begin to create institutional mechanisms. It's either we have a single rail authority, [or] the other is that we [are] going to need a Gauteng transport authority."
At the moment, all municipalities had jurisdiction over their turf, but overtime the road network across the province will need to be seen "more in a holistic way".
"The bests practise we are picking up from different parts of the world is the idea of an authority, but the distinctive thing again is, you take London, you have Transport For London, it's one city, one authority," Vadi says.
"We've come back from Istanbul. It's one city, it's one authority. We've come back from Singapore, it's a state and one authority. We've got three cities, and a provincial government, so to create that mechanism, at the moment the legal framework, the constitutional framework, doesn't allow for it."
What the legal framework did allow for was inter-governmental relationships, but not for a single authority.
"We are going to have to look at changing the legislation and this applies to even other developments. Whether it's housing, anything. I mean, this is a very compact province and you want to drive a more coherent provincial agenda of development," Vadi says.
"[With] housing [and] health, you need high levels of cooperation and coordination with the municipalities to achieve that. At the moment its more on building the relationships, but at some point in the future you are going to need an institutional mechanism for that."
