Commuter activist group #UniteBehind says it will launch litigation in the new year to compel the minister of transport to hasten the local control of commuter rail to municipalities or provincial governments, also known as devolution if they do not see concrete progress.

#UniteBehind director Zackie Achmat told GroundUp that the case would be against the minister and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), and would cite the City of Cape Town.

Devolution of rail has long been a government policy, but to date, there has been little progress or coordination to achieve this, either by the national government or by municipalities. According to the National Land Transport Act of 2009 (NLTA), commuter rail should be located "in the appropriate sphere of government".

The City of Cape Town appears to be ready to claim its responsibilities for commuter rail. On 13 December, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis released a statement, which argued that the persistently poor performance of PRASA "confirms the urgency for rail devolution".

Hill-Lewis said that there was no hope of the national government turning around passenger rail, and they needed to start planning for the handover process without delay.

He said that the City was moving ahead with completing its Rail Feasibility Study, a necessary first step before devolution can be implemented, but that the City required "access to all institutional, financial and technical information associated with operating the current rail system in Cape Town" from PRASA. 

Correspondence from the City to Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula shows that the City has been attempting to push ahead with devolution. On 23 May, Hill-Lewis wrote to Mbalula to propose establishing a working committee composed of City and Department of Transport officials to discuss how commuter rail could be devolved to the City, in line with the National Rail Policy that Mbalula had gazetted earlier this year. No reply was received.

Then on 18 August, Hill-Lewis wrote to Mbalula, saying that the City had begun a feasibility study into the devolution and assignment of rail on 1 July 202 and that a conceptual report was due at the end of September.

Hill-Lewis requested a meeting and asked for information that the City could use to inform its plans to take over commuter rail from PRASA. Once again, no reply.

LITTLE COORDINATION
On 1 December, Hill-Lewis wrote a further follow-up letter to Mbalula, noting that the minister had not replied to either of his preceding letter and yet again asked to meet with him to discuss the devolution of rail to the municipal government.

In May this year, the Department of Transport released its National Rail Policy White Paper, which "acknowledges the importance of devolving public transport functions to the lowest level of government". But just days before, on 28 April, Mbalula seemed to pour cold water on hastening devolution, tweeting: 

Any suggestions that the Minister of Finance has given a green light for commuter rail takeover by the City of Cape Town is inaccurate. Only the Minister of Transport can assign a public transport function to another sphere of government.

#UniteBehind has been calling for the devolution of commuter rail since 201 and has been writing to the City of Cape Town since 2020, arguing that it must be pursued proactively.

In a letter to Hill-Lewis in June this year, Achmat wrote that the NLTA placed the responsibility for integrated land transport with local government, especially metropolitan municipalities.

But there has been little coordination to achieve this.

A 2014 submission from the Financial and Fiscal Commission to the City of Cape Town said that the "municipality [the City of Cape Town] cannot fully achieve all these functions [described in the NLTA] without also having control over rail".

In 2015, PRASA and the City of Cape Town signed a memorandum of action - from which very little action flowed - which acknowledged that there was, at that stage, "a strong push from national government… for the devolution of rail to the metros".

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In 2017, the City’s transport authority, then under Brett Herron, published the Business Plan for the Assignment of Urban Rail, which presented the metro’s transport authority’s case for devolving rail and starting the assignment process immediately. But, again, despite there being a clear crisis in commuter rail (and then not yet anywhere near its lowest point), there was no action.

But Hill-Lewis’s statement suggests that the City is ready to forge ahead with assuming responsibility for commuter rail.

'Transport minister with substance'

In a 12 December letter to #UniteBehind, Neil Slingers, the City’s Director of Transport Planning and Network Management, said that the City would develop a service level plan for rail "on a corridor basis", in terms of the NLTA, together with PRASA. Slingers writes that the City intends to have "urban rail devolved from the National Department of Transport".

According to #UniteBehind, in a 22 September, 2022 letter to the City, a service level plan is "the elected enforcement mechanism that ensures control, monitoring and oversight over PRASA. A properly drafted and implemented service level plan will give effect to the City’s constitutional duty".

Achmat told GroundUp: 

The City of Cape Town has control over the safety of commuters - it has been the law since 2009, but has never been applied. The step by the mayor and City is critical and starts a new path. Now, the City has committed to immediately start with the drafting of a service level plan in consultation with PRASA as required by law.

"Mbalula will go to Luthuli House after his election as ANC secretary-general. Now is the chance for President Cyril Ramaphosa to appoint a minister of transport with substance.

"Will the minister instruct PRASA to enter into service-level plans with all municipalities and the Gauteng government without delay?" Achmat asked.

We do not know, because we sent detailed questions to the Department of Transport, and just as with the mayor of Cape Town, we also received no reply.