Mobility

[1]   The Department has written to Metrorail requesting a response, but as yet, no response has been received.

There have been reports, concerning loadshedding which has affected the electrical supply to Eskom substations, which in turn feed a number of Prasa substations on the rail network. The intermittent supply can cause wide-spread malfunctioning of electrical assets and at the very least a delayed return to service of the units, which are required to feed power to the electric rolling stock. [iol.co.za/news/] The end result is that this leaves Metrorail with no alternative but to suspend or cancel services.

Additionally, those systems which operate off the light current municipal power supply, such as stations, signal power supplies and train scheduling systems are negatively affected by load shedding.

The situation is further exacerbated by criminals, who use the periods of loadshedding as an opportune time to vandalise critical assets on the network, causing further delays, when the power is eventually restored.

Metrorail have a number of contingency plans that they employ during loadshedding which include:

• Tickets sold from portable ticket issuing machines
• The use of load hailers to make local station announcements
• Manual authorisation signal control to allow train movement

[2]   Recent DTPW funding support to Metrorail/Prasa can be broken down as follows: