PRASA officials working on total rebuild PRASA & not on recovery – strategy GM 

The Passenger Rail Agency of South (PRASA) says it is not working to recover the state-owned company but to rebuild it as per an official.

PRASA strategy General Manager Anna-Marie Lubbe says they are working to ensure the company returns to its best as far as operations are concerned.

Speaking during a transport forum event, Lubbe said they are working on a process to ensure PRASA is back to its feet and that the process is not rehabilitation.

“We are hard at work rebuilding PRASA. It is not a recovery, it is not a rehabilitation [process] – it is a total rebuild,” she said.

Operating a commuter passenger rail service, as well as a long-distance passenger rail service, Lubbe added that PRASA is focused on building a new rail system that will allow it to consistently offer a service that is fast, reliable, and safe.

“I think that has been our downfall in the past; that we could not provide a consistently good service,” she added.

“People also carried away our per way – our rail tracks. This is not someone who needs to buy bread, this is organised crime.”

As some of PRASA’s challenges, she alluded to the fact that the parastatal experienced infrastructure destruction at a massive scale prior to Covid-19 and during the pandemic, singling out Cape Town’s central line and the Mabopane line in Gauteng.

Overhead traction equipment disappeared, substations were vandalised and signalling and telecommunications systems were destroyed, reports Engineering News.

As a result of such damages and vandalism, this meant that PRASA could only restart some services ¬– six out of 40 lines – following the hard lockdown related to Covid-19.

“We are currently sitting at 15 lines, with 10% of the trains we normally run. Even where we introduced trains, we have limited service,” noted Lubbe.

The PRASA GM also announced their plans, saying their aim is to retore the Johannesburg to Naledi corridor, Johannesburg to Leralla, and Pretoria to Johannesburg.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the goal is to restore the Durban to KwaMashu and Durban to Umlazi lines next.

“We do not have a closed [rail] system – one of the few in the world. This open system leaves us vulnerable to theft and vandalism, so we want to close off our system,” she continued.

“This is to protect commuters and our fare revenue. This will all contribute to enabling us to run a consistent service with people who pay for the service they are using.”

Main Image: Prasa Train/TimesLIVE