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Gautrain
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Question 1 1. Public rejections to the project will be one of the greatest barriers. Public transport in South Africa does not have a good track record and added to this negative situation, great resistance from the public to the location and positioning of the stations and railway lines will increase objections to the project. This barrier could be overcome by changing the route, with suggested alternative routes. This would have a major impact on reducing the number of houses that were potentially in line for expropriation. Once the final railway route is decided upon, every individual homeowner could be spoken to and professional private sector evaluators could assess market and replacement values and advise property owners of their rights and options. 2. Since the project has chosen a gauge that is not used in South Africa, the coaches cannot be manufactured in South Africa, therefore creating less jobs locally. The main reason for using the wider gauge is to enable the train to achieve speeds of 180 km/h, thereby reducing the travel time and becoming more attractive to existing car users. Are the travel time savings really significant when at least another 30 minutes will be spent traveling to and from stations, walking in and out of stations. By using the standard South African railway gauge, it will provide the opportunity to reduce the costs of staging and maintenance depots and to integrate with other existing railway lines. 3. The proposed one way fare of between R15 and R20 will be affordable to most of those currently using cars. But the income required to afford this in terms of the Governments’ policy that transport costs should not exceed 10% of disposable income is over R6, 600 per month. How many individuals in Gauteng have this monthly income? The fare structure could have some flexibility, providing for example cheaper weekly and monthly tickets and allowing a slight differentiation in fares from different areas. 4. One of the other barriers to this project could be the large number of interdependent project elements that have to be addressed simultaneously. International indications are that a typical modern, rapid rail system takes, on average 14 years to plan and construct. One of the ways to overcome this barrier could be to fast-track the project process; this can be done by simultaneously planning for the various multi-disciplinary elements of the project. 5. Another challenge to the projects’ success could be to optimize the system design of the Gautrain project. The optimization process can only be achieved using an iteration approach. The final optimization of the project should be the responsibility of the successful bidding consortium, which in turn should do the detailed design. 6. An unskilled workforce could be a barrier to the success of the project since costs could rise due to unnecessary construction errors of the rail system. This barrier could be overcome by implementing training courses for the unskilled workforce and implementing workshops on what is required to be achieved. 7. The ability of Government to negotiate successfully with the preferred bidder could be a barrier. If the negotiations are not well managed, delays may be encountered. When selecting the successful bidder, Government should evaluate their technical performance schedule, cost control and management. The evaluation should concentrate on the bidder’s ability to make completion estimates based on earned-value data, develop and implement corrective action plans and successfully track against those plans. 8. Legal aspects including obtaining right of way are a very sensitive issue. The proposed rail link will require a rail reserve along the alignment. This alignment will cross different metropolitan authority areas, it will also cross land which will be open and other land that will be developed. Existing servitudes for services such as electrical supply, telecommunication and pipelines will also be crossed and present challenges to the project team. The only practical way to obtain the required rail reserve would be through proclamation of the railway line and the expropriation of the required land.
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