All aboard Cape Town’s rail plan?

It is a bright, hot December day in Cape Town. The central train station is a hive of activity, with families eager to make full use of the long summer days. Beachgoers board eagerly. The train departs shortly after 11am. A ticket from Cape Town to Fish Hoek costs only about R12 — and of course the rail link enables riders to escape the city’s notoriously congested roads.

The station is the symbolic centre of a political tug-of-war. The DA runs both the city and the Western Cape, and it has long maintained that it would do a better job than the national Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) of running the region’s commuter trains.

The topic came up during the city’s last council meeting in December, when the council approved a rail business plan that it hopes will be a step closer to devolution. The city wants devolution completed and operations handed over by 2028.

The plan explored nine scenarios. All involve “the devolution of rail services, associated assets and infrastructure to the city, with the participation of the private sector operating services on a contractual or comprehensive concession basis”. The city says it will now approach the national government to discuss the practicalities.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis dedicated much of his final council speech of 2025 to the topic.

He said the “steady decline and near collapse of the Metrorail service has been disastrous” for the local economy and for the hundreds of thousands of Cape Town commuters.

“Taking over the service is just the first step in a much bigger vision that will see rail integrated with all the city’s other transport offerings on one integrated ticket system, as well as [extensively] upscaling the passenger numbers on trains. This big vision also includes, over the next two decades, new routes, new train sets, upgrades to stations and the development of the precincts around the stations with affordable housing,” he told councillors.

Importantly, Hill-Lewis added that there is “no capacity in the city’s rates base to cross-subsidise this service, on top of the large cross-subsidy we pay to MyCiTi [the city’s bus service]”.

Globally, commuter rail services tend to be subsidised by governments. This has always been the case in South Africa. Devolution was long resisted by the ANC national government, but it has now been approved in principle. The devil, as always, will be in the details.

Though policy papers do not mention the political aspect, if devolution does happen, would a national government be tempted to divert funding away from subsidising Cape Town’s rail services?

At the same council meeting, the opposition GOOD party called for an “honest” debate on devolution and said the progress Prasa has made should be acknowledged. Councillor Siyabulela Mamkeli said Prasa has in recent years “made real and visible progress in restoring rail services in Cape Town”.

Let us pursue rail devolution, but let us do it honestly. Let us do it with real plans, not political slogans

—  Siyabulela Mamkeli, GOOD

This includes the return of some trains to the central line, connecting Langa to Nyanga, Bonteheuwel, Khayelitsha and Philippi; stabilisation and service improvements on parts of the northern line; and continued reliable operations on the southern line to Fish Hoek, where passengers have benefited from improved security and station upgrades. However, even on the southern line, the full service to Simon’s Town has not been restored due to sand on the tracks.

“Co-operation cannot be built on political theatre or public exaggeration,” Mamkeli said. “Let us pursue rail devolution, but let us do it honestly. Let us do it with real plans, not political slogans. And let us do it in a way that complements Prasa’s progress, instead of pretending it does not exist.”

Mamkeli makes a valid point. Prasa has upped its game. It is no longer necessarily obvious that the city would do a better job. And whoever runs the trains will need to invest billions of rand to repair all the infrastructure, money that could never be recovered from passenger fares.

On the southern line, the new trains have an added safety measure — they won’t move unless all the doors are closed. There are many improvements, but issues remain. The electronic boards at the main station, for example, sometimes don’t work. The boards on the trains, which indicate the next stop, flicker on and off. Some of the train windows badly need cleaning.

The Cape Town-Fish Hoek link is a good showcase for progress, but it is not a mass transit line.

Prasa has been testing the last stretch of the central line, serving the huge townships on the Cape Flats. The line was closed due to vandalism and safety issues in 2019 and it has taken years to move people who settled on the tracks in many places.

The test trains, says Prasa, will serve Philippi, Lentegeur, Mitchells Plain and Kapteinsklip stations, vital sections in the final phase of restoring full operations on the corridor. It is the most important route in Cape Town, one that tens of thousands of commuters once used daily.

According to Prasa, “the test trains represent the transition to final safety checks and certifications needed to reopen the line. Prasa Western Cape aims to have the Philippi-Kapteinsklip line fully operational by January 2026. The only remaining work is conducting integrity tests and submitting them to the Railway Safety Regulator for final sign-off.”

Last year, transport minister Barbara Creecy said the rehabilitation of the central line created more than 2,500 jobs and cost at least R1.3bn. “We hope to run an optimal service where we have six trains per hour” — which would be a great improvement, but a long way from the frequency of trains when the service was fully operational.

Prof Stephan Krygsman, an expert in transport economics at Stellenbosch University, says that while devolution is desirable, several important questions remain unanswered. “Of course, Prasa is a political issue. But good public transport is vital for the functioning of the city. The city cannot be held hostage by the main service provider,” he tells the FM.

The city’s mayoral committee member for urban mobility, councillor Rob Quintas, tells the FM that the future of mobility is integrated transport and no single mode can be viewed in isolation. The long-term plan aims for residents to use public transport for 75% of all trips by 2050, and for no Capetonian to spend more than 10% of disposable income on transport.

“The city needs to have authority over fare-setting, access to long-term national grant funding, and [to be able] to generate local revenue through public-private partnerships and commercialisation.”

Says Krygsman: “It is not possible to take over the rail service without reallocation of the subsidy from Prasa to the city. Then you have the staff. For big projects like this, we always overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs.

“Rail should serve everyone in Cape Town if it is to be successful. For low-income earners, rail will allow them to save money. For middle-income people, they will be able to access more and better jobs. As for high-income individuals, they are the people who cause [road] congestion, and we need to get them out of their cars. You need all the market segments to make rail a viable alternative.”

The progress on restoring the Fish Hoek service is a big step forward, but in the bigger commuter rail picture it is not even the end of the beginning.

In response to the FM’s questions, Collen Msibi, spokesperson for the department of transport, says they will wait for the approach from the city. “It is important to note that the national rail bill that is being finalised will set out the terms and conditions for rail devolution.”