The draft White Paper on the National Rail Policy is expected to be completed by the end of this year, with the legislative process only expected to begin after the 2019 national elections.

The promulgation of the draft White Paper would mark the first time government would be giving the South African rail sector policy direction in about 150 years, instead of the other way around, Department of Transport rail deputy director-general Jan-David de Villiers told delegates attending the recent Transport Forum, in Johannesburg.

With rail no longer able to compete effectively against other transport modes, and not being able to win its proper share of the national freight and passenger transport volumes, De Villiers lamented, the South African rail sector was “uncompetitive and operationally challenged”.

It was hoped that the National Rail Policy would change this, he stated.

The move to rail held several opportunities, De Villiers pointed out, including reducing congestion and safety on the country’s roads. It also had environmental and economic benefits.

Policy intervention through the National Rail Policy would primarily focus on increasing investment in rail.

This primary intervention would rebalance rail sector investment, he added, pointing out that government intended to invest R170-billion into the sector over the next ten years.

The rationale behind this decision, De Villiers elaborated, was to position rail as South Africa’s transport backbone by 2050 and to support the United Nations’ commitment to greenhouse-gas emissions reduction.

South African rail, he said, would offer the safest, most economically, environmentally, financially and socially viable logistics and/or mobility solution.

In terms of freight rail, De Villiers noted that current industry players – such as Transnet Freight Rail – addressed only a fraction of the freight-rail-addressable market.

The classic remedy to this, he pointed out, would be to allow on-rail competition, which would open an opportunity to third-party operators by way of opening rail freight operations to private-sector participation.

“Note that on-rail competition is a palliative that recognises only service quality, quantity and pricing, as well as operational efficiency, but cannot address narrow-gauge- rail’s inherent competitiveness,” De Villiers warned, adding that, therefore, on-rail competition would not be an alternative or substitute for the primary investment-led intervention in a standard-gauge high-performance national rail network.

Meanwhile, the introduction of competition for services that the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) offers maximises the value of services delivered to passengers and minimises the economic resources that it uses to do so.

“The introduction of competition for services that PRASA renders may be considered but direct on-rail competition in core urban commuter markets is generally accepted as unworkable,” De Villiers said.

Assigning urban rail to transport authorities would expose it to a natural competition for funding from other nodes, while also sharpening the industry’s sensitivity to service quality and quantity perception, he highlighted.

“The White Paper is very clear on the evolution of the rail function in metropolitan areas, and the evolving capacity. [The rail industry] will not evolve if there is no increased capacity,” De Villiers noted.

However, increasing capacity would be a long process, and might only occur seven years after the National Rail Policy had been promulgated, he lamented.

“The National Rail Policy will position rail robustly for a bright future, [but] the situation will not improve by itself. The do-nothing option will [mean] South Africa’s logistics and mobility [will continue to be] based on roads and fossil fuels, except for urban rail, by 2050, while the rest of the world enjoys low-cost renewable energy, with rail transport as the backbone,” he concluded.