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Chilean Railway Museum

Photos from Chile’s National Railway Museum, in the Quinta Normal park:

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Read Full Post | July 17 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Tren Patagónico

Pictures from the overnight train ride from Viedma to Bariloche:

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Read Full Post | July 02 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

El Tren del Fin del Mundo

In Ushuaia, I rode the southernmost railway in the world. The Ferrocarril Austral Fuegino was originally built to ferry prisoners from Ushuaia’s jail to logging camps in what is now Tierra del Fuego National Park. Riding it right after the year’s first snow was quite scenic.

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Read Full Post | July 02 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Shosholoza Meyl

Pictures from the 27-hour trip on the Shosholoza Meyl Trans-Karoo from Johannesburg to Cape Town:

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Read Full Post | June 06 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Gautrain

Gautrain, one of the world's newest high speed rail systems

To begin my time in Johannesburg, I was able to travel from my house in Cape Town to my hosts’ apartment in Johannesburg without stepping in a car. Traveling to and from the airports on either end, I took advantage of Metrorail, Cape Town’s Airport Shuttle, Gautrain, and a Gautrain feeder bus. Riding Gautrain, Gauteng Province’s new high speed rail line, for the fifteen minute trip from O.R. Tambo International Airport to Sandton was quite enjoyable.

The following day, I sat down with Dr. Paul Vorster, CEO of ITS South Africa. He shared his insights on the history of transport in South Africa and its relation to new developments like intelligent transportation systems and high speed rail. He compared the inauguration of Gautrain to the arrival of the first Ford Model T in Cape Town’s harbor. By itself, each event accomplished relatively little, but they both signaled an impending paradigm shift. In his words, “South Africa is busy with a transport revolution,” and Gautrain is leading the effort to make public transportation “sexy” to discretionary riders (car owners).

Gautrain’s focus on attracting relatively wealthy car owners was an issue raised by many of the project’s critics, who questioned the logic of spending R28 billion (R3 billion of which was paid by concessionaire Bombela) on a project for people who already owned cars when so many of the country’s non-car-owning households face serious mobility constraints. Dr. Vorster’s response would be that congestion, especially along the Ben Schoeman freeway linking Johannesburg and Pretoria, is crippling the economy; if Gautrain gets the stock exchange president to his office on time, he can spend more time creating jobs and less time sitting in traffic. Gautrain is not in itself a comprehensive mobility solution, but rather a “strategic intervention” that can help catalyze a public transport mindset for the whole country. Indeed, one-time critics of the project, such as Transport Deputy Minister Jeremy Cronin, have recognized this paradigmatic value of the project:

Transport Deputy Minister Jeremy Cronin hoped that the Gautrain would change mindsets around public transport. He also hoped that this would encourage the public to choose rail instead of road transport. “Indeed this event has presented an opportunity that we can all draw lessons from. It has generated the energy and drive that this country will need,” said Cronin who also enjoyed a ride on the train.

Gautrain has become a luxury brand, with one of the hotels in Sandton even being named The Gautrain Hotel. High-end redevelopment around Sandton alone is valued at about R25 billion. Thousands of passengers have been able to appreciate Gautrain’s sleek looks, smooth ride, automated fare collection, dedicated security, and convenient 12-minute headways during peak hours. While the airport link has been well-utilized, the associated feeder bus services have not been. This may change when the full 50-mile link to Pretoria and Hatfield begins revenue service at the start of July. The video below gives an entertaining and informative overview of the project:

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Read Full Post | June 03 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | No Comments » |

Metrorail

Cape Town’s Metrorail Stations (by Wwwdigi (Own work) (CC-BY-SA-3.0), via Wikimedia Commons)

Cape Town has historically relied on extensive commuter rail infrastructure to meet commuters’ demands.  The 118 Metrorail stations across the region serve 151 million passengers annually. Of Cape Town commuters who use public transport, 56% rely on Metrorail. Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria), KwaZulu-Natal (Durban), and the Eastern Cape (Port Elizabeth and East London) also have Metrorail commuter rail service. Despite the historical importance of rail, the last few decades have seen continued bureaucratic restructuring, chronic underfunding, overcrowding, and severe delays that threaten the viability of commuter rail service in South Africa.

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At a national level, South Africa has a well-developed rail system, with the 10th most trackage of any country in the world. Commuter service began operating in 1890, with a train between Braamfontein and Boksburg. Twenty years later, South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H) was created as the governmental agency to oversee this growing logistics network and manage the growing passenger demand. Ridership continued to increase through the first half of the 20th Century. The implementation of the Group Areas Act (apartheid) in 1952 “exacerbated the situation immediately, since it forced the Black working class population further onto the periphery of the urban areas, and further from their places of work” (From The People Shall Move). National demand peaked at the end of the 1970s, with nearly 500 million passengers being transported annually at a R250 million annual loss. In an attempt to reduce the amount of subsidies required, SAR&H was reorganized and renamed South African Transport Services (SATS).

In 1990, SATS was reorganized again; Metrorail (a subsidiary of freight operator Transnet) was contracted for operations in Cape Town and Johannesburg, while management was transferred to the newly formed South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC). In the decade that followed, train usage declined dramatically, due to the 1989 deregulation of the taxi industry and its subsequent expansion, as well as an epidemic of political violence on trains. As ridership decreased, operational subsidies boomed, reaching R600 million per year by the mid 1990s. Capital expenditures were largely neglected in the preceding decade by the security-focused apartheid government. Except for a rolling stock refurbishment program initiated by SARCC in 1994, the new democratic government similarly ignored rail capital expenditures, favoring more immediate social spending over long term rail investment. In 2006, Metrorail was transferred from Transnet to SARCC. Finally, in 2008 SARCC was renamed the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). The agency inherited a fleet of 4638 coaches that today has an average age of 40 years.

PRASA must address this legacy of underinvestment while coping with passenger demand that is again growing. Between 2001 and 2008, annual passenger rail trips in Gauteng (the province that includes Pretoria and Johannesburg) increased 22%, to 310 million. Cape Town has seen a 17% increase in commuters over past 2 years.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | May 19 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 1 Comment » |

Livingstone Railway Museum

On the last of my four days in Zambia, I took a guided tour of the Livingstone Railway Museum. With the completion of the Victoria Falls Bridge in 1905, Livingstone became an important transit point in colonial East Africa. It was intriguing to see some of the remnants of this time. From Wikipedia:

In the mid 1890s Rhodesian Railways had reached Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia spurring industrial development there, fuelled by the coal mines at Hwange just 110 km (68 mi) south-east of Mosi-oa-Tunya. The railway was extended to Hwange for the coal, but Rhodes’ vision was to keep pushing north to extend the British Empire, and he would have built it to Cairo if he could. In 1904 the railway reached the Falls on the southern side and construction of the Victoria Falls Bridge started. Too impatient to wait for its completion, Rhodes had the line from Livingstone to Kalomo built and operations started some months in advance of the bridge using a single locomotive which was conveyed in pieces by temporary cableway across the gorge next to the bridge building site.[5]

With the new Bridge open in September 1905, Livingstone boomed and the British South Africa Company moved the capital of the territory there in 1907.[4] In 1911 the company merged the territory with North-Eastern Rhodesia as Northern Rhodesia.

Livingstone prospered from its position as a gateway to trade between north and south sides of the Zambezi, as well as from farming in the Southern Province and commercial timber production from forests to its north-west. A number of colonial buildings were erected which still stand.[3] Although the capital was moved to Lusaka in 1935 to be closer to the economic heartland of the Copperbelt, industries based on timber, hides, tobacco, cotton (including textiles) and other agricultural products grew up.

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Read Full Post | April 26 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Tazara

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara) provides twice weekly passenger service on the Cape Gauge track it owns between Dar es Salaam and Kapiri Mposhi. In January, I made the complete 1100 mile, 45 hour journey on the Kilimanjaro Express. It was one of the most impressive train rides I’ve ever taken.

The train had eighteen cars (6 third class/sitter, 1 diner, 1 lounge, 4 second class/six berth sleeper, 3 first class/four berth sleeper, 2 luggage, 1 staff) and two GE U30C locomotives. We departed from Dar es Salaam at 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, entering the Selous Game Reserve as a full moon was rising. Though I only saw a few baboons, it is not uncommon for passengers to see giraffes, buffalo, and elephants. I spoke for a while with Mr. Mkate, who works in the Tazara main office after serving as a locomotive engineer between 1992 and 1996. During that time, he killed between five and eight buffalo and several giraffes while driving the train. I guessed that when this happened, they would have to stop the train to check for damage and report the incident to park authorities; he told me that, in fact, they were prohibited from stopping so that train crew and passengers wouldn’t take the meat for themselves.

Even though I was on the express train (the trains departing on Friday are local trains), we still had to stop at many of the smaller stations for line clearance tickets from the station masters. According to Mr. Mkate, about half of the signals along the line are nonoperational, so manual clearance procedures are required. When I expressed my surprise about the number of derailed boxcars I saw along the route, he told me that these were mostly due to load shifting, but he feels that the railway is lucky to have not had a passenger derailment given its maintenance record.

I slept well the first night in spite of occasional wheel slippage and station stops. The next morning, I awoke to some spectacular views as we climbed into the mountains. The railway has twenty-two tunnels (the longest of which is over a mile long) and many bridges. I enjoyed breakfast in the dining car, then exchanged my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwachas with one of the money changers who boarded the train. When we passed the Mukuba Express heading in the opposite direction near the boarder, the money changers hopped off our train and Zambian Immigration hopped onto ours. The Tazara official from whom I had bought my ticket in Dar es Salaam told me it was preferable to get a Zambian visa in advance, but because I didn’t want to leave my passport overnight at the Zambian High Commission, he said that it was possible to get a visa on board the train. The immigration officials had not show up at my compartment by dinner time, so my new travel companions (a South Korean history teacher, a Japanese architect, and a Japanese travel agent) and I went to the dining car.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | April 26 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

City Night Line

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find any direct flights from Panama City to my next destination, Dar es Salaam. Since the cheapest flight to Europe was to Frankfurt, I decided to fly there, take a train down to Italy, and catch a ferry to Africa. My red-eye flight from Panama City was originally scheduled to land in Frankfurt at 7:00 AM, giving me plenty of time to travel by train to Florence, where I would spend the night. I was looking forward to this opportunity to see the Alps by train during the winter. When I arrived at the airport, however, I found out the flight had been “retimed,” departing seven hours late due to winter weather in Europe. When I arrived in Frankfurt, I found out the trains were running late because of weather problems too. There was no way to make it to Munich in time for my train to Florence; luckily, I was able to book a spot on the night train.

After my first train journey of the trip (and my first time on a DeutscheBahn ICE train) from the Frankfurt Flughafen Station to the Munich Hauptbahnhof, I had a couple of hours to pick up some bratwurst and ride around the U-Bahn. I boarded City Night Line Train 485 for the 9:00 PM departure. The ride through Bayern and up into Austria was breathtaking. Though I didn’t get to see the mountains during the day, as I had originally hoped, there was something magical about riding through the night with the snow on the ground and lights sparkling in the distance – this was probably the closest to the Polar Express I’ll ever get. The tracks winding through the mountains south of Innsbruck were especially nice, and I loved watching trucks barreling down the highway that paralleled the tracks into Bressanone. I arrived at Firenze Santa Maria Novella at 6:20 the next morning, exhausted after staying up for most of the night watching the scenery.

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Read Full Post | March 19 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Museo de Ferrocarril

My first stop in Guatemala City was the great railway museum. The 25 cent admission gave me access to a selection of old locomotives (including a couple built near Swarthmore), coaches, other miscellaneous rail vehicles, and historical photos.

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Read Full Post | October 07 2010 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | No Comments » |