Gautrain has changed many lives. For a growing number of Gautengers, the 160km/h service has become their preferred mode of transport to and from work. As we heard in this interview with Gautrain’s Errol Braithwaite, volumes are running 27% higher than a year ago. But niggles remain. Especially on the route between Sandton and the OR Tambo Airport where the service stops at 8:30pm – long before the day’s last flights have landed. Having been caught out by delayed flights a couple of times, it’s a subject close to my heart. So when Braithwaite came through to the CNBC Africa Power Lunch studio last week, I asked him what gives. He left me with hope that a sensible adjustment is coming soon. – AH Â Â
ALEC HOGG: Errol, I’m a big fan.  I catch the Gautrain to Sandton daily. However, what is going on with your planning for getting the Gautrain to work properly from OR Tambo? 8:30pm it’s finished, and you know if you have a delayed flight, how irritating that can be.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  It’s a major problem. You’ll remember last time when we spoke Alec; we did talk about extended operating hours – both earlier and later, to the airport. Those have progressed very well and so we hope that we’ll make some very positive announcements in the very near future about that.
ALEC HOGG: Surely, you’d have a look and you’d say ‘these are the numbers of travellers who arrive’ – and there are many planes that arrive after 8:30pm. There must be a commercial imperative or opportunity.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Look, there certainly is. There are some constraints as well. It’s one thing running a once-off event as we’re doing this coming Saturday, but to run it on a continual basis is a level of complexity above that because you need to have additional shifts. Train drivers are constrained with the numbers of hours they can drive in a particular week, so you have to employ, train, and get all these guys going.
ALEC HOGG: No, it’s a business opportunity. If you tell any businessman that you have a business opportunity, they don’t say to you ‘oh, I have to train people’.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  It absolutely is a business opportunity. You’re very right.
ALEC HOGG: We’re looking forward to you doing it. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is why are these buses of yours running? They’re always empty.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  On the contrary, at the moment we’re carrying 23 000 people per day on the buses, so they’re anything but empty. Very much the same as any public transport system – very steep peaks in the mornings and evenings – and of course, great troughs in the middle of the day. That’s exactly the same as what you see in the minibus taxis. It’s exactly the same as the pattern you see on the freeways so there’s no difference. Last year the bus volumes grew by something like 60 percent and the train volumes by…I think it was 27 percent so by any measure, that’s a lot of take-up.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI:  What about parking? Alec may be lucky enough to walk to the Gautrain Station, but parking has been an issue recently.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Well, you’re right. With all this additional take-up, we’re running into capacity constraints now. On any given day, over 90 percent of our parking bays have a car in them. That means that very often you might arrive for instance, at Pretoria Station, Midrand, or Centurion, and find that there’s in fact, no parking bay available. There are plans to start procuring some additional land/additional space for some additional parking bays, but these things all take a little bit of time. At the moment in fact, we’re running train services, the extent of which were only envisaged in 2026, so we’re way ahead of schedule.
ALEC HOGG: It’s such a success story, isn’t it?
ERROL BRAITHWAITE: Â Yes.
ALEC HOGG: Are you able to maybe convince government to do more public/private partnerships? E-tolls might have been a different story if wasn’t a state-run issue.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Alec, I think as with any big city anywhere in the world, these cities function – or don’t function – on the functionality of their public transport. You can’t have big cities without very efficient public transport. Imagine London without the underground. If it goes down for a day, I tell you everyone knows about it. Here in Johannesburg and Pretoria, we really are moving towards a situation that is very similar. We have to get into a mindset where public transport becomes a way of life. It’s not ‘either the Gautrain, Metrorail, minibus taxis, Metro bus, or the BRT’. It’s all of the above. Simultaneously, they have to grow. They have to become more efficient. They need to expand. They have to become more user-friendly, because this is the only way these big cities can survive.
ALEC HOGG:Â What is your relationship like with the guys from Metrorail?
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Very good indeed. In fact, for this evening on Saturday night we’ve partnered with them, so of course, the Gautrain system runs on its tracks. The most southerly station is Park Station in the middle of the Johannesburg CBD. If you’re going to Santana, you walk across the concourse onto the Metrorail train. It will be waiting for you, and you’ll carry on with Metrorail down to FNB.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI:  And safety issues…? That’s something that some concertgoers might be concerned about.
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Look, we’ve mobilised additional security staff for this event. Obviously, we want it to be a very safe family environment, so we’re going to be quite serious about safety as we always are. We do however, want you to feel comfortable – to the extent that people like Alec might be a bit exuberant – we’re going to exclude you from the system I’m afraid, Alec.
ALEC HOGG: That’s fine. I had a couple of guys on the aeroplane with me last night that were very exuberant. The poor hostess…
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  You don’t need that.
ALEC HOGG: Anyway, to come back to the 2026 story, when I rave about the Gautrain (and I do) …as a user, I’m a very satisfied user. It’s like living in Switzerland in some ways. I always get the cynics who say ‘yes, but we are paying for it’. The government is paying for it’. What is the subsidy? How does all of that work?
ERROL BRAITHWAITE:  Alec, you’re quite right. You and I – the taxpayers – are paying for the system, as public transport is subsidised anywhere in the world. I did a study not so long ago, looking at 61 different railway systems around the world. Only six out of 61 managed to cover their own operating costs. Not a single one also covered its capex. Those six are all in the Far East. Tokyo Metro carries 3.2 billion passengers per year. The London Underground, which is 100 times bigger than we are in terms of passenger numbers, covers 50 percent of its operating costs and the Gautrain – about 60 percent of its operating costs. This is something that we need to get used to; you need efficient public transport as I’ve said in order to make cities functional. We need to move away from this mindset that a particular project – isolated – needs to be profitable. If that were the case, there would be no primary schools. There would be no sewerage works. There would be no state hospitals. These things are required in order to make communities function.
