Why pay for First World dreams?

The award for the most tone-deaf and badly timed comment of the year – a year in which there were many foot-in-the-mouth moments – must surely go to Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) CEO William Dachs, who believes that it is time to start taxing motorists to pay to expand Gautrain … even if they never use the service.

At a time when most people are still staggering financially from the effects on the economy of the Covid-19 lockdowns, this is not only insensitive, it also, amazingly, runs counter to the arguments of that other grandiose civil construction extortion project, e-tolls.

The SA National Roads Agency has been saying for years that e-tolls are justified on the basis of the “user pays” principle. In other words, you use the highways, you should pay. Never mind that our taxes pay for a host of government services we never use. Now, Dachs wants to say: pay for what you don’t use.

We are not arguing Dachs’ contention that a planned expansion of the commuter rail network – to include a further 150km of rail and 19 stations – is necessary, nor that we need to wean people away from cars as a means of mass transport.

However, the Gautrain is already an overpriced, inefficient, luxury system. It is cheaper to drive to OR Tambo International airport and pay for long-term parking off site than it is to take a return Gautrain ride there. Despite this, the system needs huge government subsidies – taxpayers’ money – to survive.

Gautrain started out life as a vanity project for then Gauteng premier Sam Shilowa in the ’90s and is wholly inappropriate for the province or the country. Rather rehabilitate our current commuter train system and expand that, than expect us to pay for the glamorous First World dreams of the Gautrain bosses.

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