Now that the Gautrain has been approved by the national cabinet, it is time for the authorities to stop being defensive and the contractors to stop being secretive. It is time to tell us how the railway will be built, where the first holes in the ground will appear, what the disruption to our lives will be.
But that communication will be the easy part . Though the contractors have been claiming confidentiality for competitive reasons, their plans for the train itself are comprehensive and they need to share their excitement with us.
The really difficult part will be to reveal plans for the Gautrain to be part of a broader integrated transport system - because we suspect such plans do not exist; or if they do, that they are only in the most basic form, such as: "We will lay on extra buses to get people to the trains."
To understand Gauteng's transport problems, you have to understand where we came from, whereas the planners give every sign of wanting simply to embark on a big, clean, fresh project. It's so much less complicated that way.
Greater Johannesburg used to have a reasonably good public transport system. Even citizens with cars used it frequently. The bus routes resembled the spokes of a wheel, with "town" as the hub. The city was also served by buses from other Reef municipalities, and by suburban railway lines running east to west from Randfontein to Springs, south to Vereeniging and Soweto, and north via Germiston to Pretoria. These services were segregated, of course, according to the mad dictates of apartheid, and separate was seldom equal as the theory claimed it was. But within that unfortunate context the system was generally efficient, adequate, reliable and safe.
If the Gautrain were to be grafted on to such a public transport service, imperfect but functioning, there might be less scepticism. But those bus and train services have been severely degraded by four factors since the early 1980s. First, suburban expansion and the shift of the business centre of gravity towards Sandton rendered many of the old bus and train routes irrelevant to the needs of commuters, white and black. Second, the vacuum was rapidly filled by the taxi industry, which hardly existed a quarter of a century ago. Third, as part of a wider lawlessness, buses and especially trains became unacceptably dangerous. Fourth, transport planning was in effect put on hold for two decades, as politicians grappled with problems of transition perceived to be more pressing.
As a result, Johannesburg commuters have largely deserted public transport; the only way to prise them out of their cars and taxis will be to lure them with a promise of lower prices, comfort, convenience, reliability and personal safety.
If we had a sense that the planners understood this challenge, we might be reassured. Instead we get the feeling that the Gautrain has become an end in itself, an answer to a problem that has not been understood, and therefore will not be solved. The last thing it needs to be is a "prestige" project, built in isolation from the needs of the surrounding society.
