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New Metrolink Cars

Southern California’s commuter rail authority, Metrolink, has received 24 new Hyundai Rotem crash-absorbing cab cars out of a total order of 117.

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Read Full Post | November 03 2011 | Transport | No Comments » |

Ferroclub Argentino

Railways played an important role in Argentina’s economic and political development. The Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz National Railway Museum writes, “The railroad, that magical and alluring world of trains, is one of the most transcendental inventions of humanity. In our country, the first rail line was inaugurated on August 29, 1857, just years after this revolutionary means of transit began to run in Europe.”

Much of Argentina’s early infrastructure and rolling stock was built with foreign investment. When Colonel Perón nationalized the railways in 1948, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, who had written “railways constitute the fundamental key of the nation,” claimed that Argentina had finally “bought sovereignty.” The country’s golden age of rail did not last long, though some rolling stock was manufactured domestically from 1957 up until 1982. As the current Railway Infrastructure Administration explains:

In the late 1940s, the railway network reached 43,000 kilometers. Railway schools were started, and steam engines, diesel locomotives, and all types of carriages were manufactured. The trip from Buenos Aires to Rosario was covered in 3.5 hours. But that progress came to a halt after the coup of 1955. Argentine railways entered into a gradual and continual agony: the Larkin Plan during the government of Frondizi; the means of “rationalization” of the civic-military coup of 1976, and especially the railway scrapping undertaken by the neoliberal regime of Carlos Menem. During that administration, under the promise of improving services, the lines were privatized or transfered to the provincial governments.

Much of this history is documented in the National Railway Museum as well as a number of Railway Clubs. Members of these clubs volunteer to restore rolling stock and run charters with restored steam engines. The Colonel Lynch branch I visited is home to 88 coaches and 9 locomotives. I especially enjoyed seeing some of the original Line B subway cars.

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

Bikes on the Urquiza Line

Unlike in many cities, the commuter rail lines in Buenos Aires allow bicycles aboard during rush hour. I spent a weekday afternoon riding the Urquiza Line to see how it worked. At one point there were about 15 bikes hanging from the racks in the crowded car, and passengers were generally helpful about making room for the bikes.

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Read Full Post | June 21 2011 | School Bus Migrations | 1 Comment » |

Commuter Rail in Buenos Aires

Greater Buenos Aires relies on one of the most extensive commuter rail networks in the Americas (map here). Four main rail terminals are located in the city: Retiro (San Martín, Mitre, and Belgrano Norte lines), Constitución (Roca line), Once (Sarmiento line), and Lacroze (Urquiza line). Privatization during the early 1990s led to chronic underinvestment in these lines and deteriorating service. The national government is now undertaking a multibillion dollar improvement project, adding rolling stock, constructing grade-separated crossings, and electrifying lines.

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Read Full Post | June 17 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 1 Comment » |

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 » |

Trencitos

Trencitos (train rides) seem to be everywhere in Nicaragua. The major malls (Metrocentro, Multiplaza Las Americas, Galerias Santo Domingo) all have small train rides for kids, and the tourist destinations of Puerto Allende (in Managua) and Masaya have larger, tractor-sized ones. Maybe this trencito obsession is an attempt to fill the void left by the 1993 decision by then-President Violeta Chamorro to close the country’s rail lines and sell the equipment and tracks for scrap. Though Doña Violeta is widely regarded to have been one of Nicaragua’s best presidents, a number of people I spoke with regretted this decision to scrap the national rail system. It does seem a bit short-sighted, especially with the recent development of plans for a Pacific-Caribbean rail canal.

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Read Full Post | November 29 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |