MetroBlitz

[Derek Walker]

I was working for the railways when they brought in the Metroblitz, she was housed in the shed behind our apprenticeschool in Braamfontein. And I remember they had to go and about 6 inches off the edge of the platforms of the stations where she was due to pass through as well us upgrade all the signals and points to accomodate her.
When she did enter service half of her passengers were Transnet employees who got PTO's and ended up paying only 20% of the fee to travel on her. She was not a success economically as a result. I never saw her at speed or travelled on her, but it was a bold experiment that wasnt thought through properly.
The Gautrain has one saving grace that they never considered with Metroblitz and that was a line to the airport. I have never understood how we have an airport in Johannesburg that was never serviced by trains. Gautrain hopefully will finally solve this problem. Sadly though, the infrastructure to connect with the stations has not been considered and relying on our kamikazi taxi drivers will ensure that people will still use their cars.

[Luca Lategan]

Failed experiment just because the will wasn't there to make a success of it, like Soekie and so many other railway experiments. Rather a R14,5 million experiment than a R35 billion one!

It is quite shocking that none of the airports in South Africa are currently connected by rail.

How bad was the traffic on the Ben Schoeman highway during the 80's?

[Derek Walker]

I have no idea about the traffic on the M1 in the 80's, I was a blue collar worker, we traditionally lived on the East and West Rand and there were plenty trains to catch (with the help of PTO's), none of us had any inclination to want to go to the northern suburbs. Unfortunately the traffic and lack of parking in JHB city was always a problem even when I was young, and when the businesses all fled north to sandton and midrand there were no rail links or public transport, even though all the jobs seemed to have moved out that way because the bosses all lived out that part of town. The result was more cars on the roads. IMHO the M1 was always inadequate even as they were building it.
It was very short sighted of SAR to not provide rail links through the suburbs northwards, or to teh airport, but then I suspect their whole focus was elsewhere.

[Steve Appleton]

I have been asking about the gauge question ever since the Gautrain project first saw light of day.
One of the main justifications for the wider gauge that was given in the initial feasability study was increased stability at high speed. One argument was that the overturning moment on curves was X times (I cannot remember how many times) greater than on 1065 mm. The argument was made that the safety factor at speed on tight curves was therefore much higher. The reality is that the Gautrain at 160 km/h maximum is hardly high-speed by European and Japanese standards (hardly even by the old Metroblitz standards) which means that this increased "safety factor" is probably insignificant.
I suspected then and still do that the stability reason was given to mask the real reasons which were marketing, financial and practical, in that the consortium (essentially Bombardier) already had proven 1435 mm designs immediately available ex-UK that it wanted to sell and that it did not want to spend money and time on research, redesign and recertifcation of new rolling stock for 1065 mmm.
There is the possibility of other reasons: the use of a different gauge positively separates the Gautrain from Metrorail, avoiding any possibilty that Gautrain could be forced to merge with or extend its services over Metrorail tracks or could be required to accept traffic from Metrorail. This may be seen as a political advantage by Gautrain. Yet another possibility is contained in long-term thinking: namely that the nation will be covered with ultra-high-speed long distance services (eg Gauteng to Durban) which would indeed probably benefit from the extra safety and stability of being on 1435 mm tracks (does anyone think this was seriously considered or that any meaningful technology think-tank was convened ahead of Gautrain?). Of course there may be some technical advantages too, such as easier fitment of internal disc brakes to the longer axles, perhaps even easier track maintenance due to the "relatively" larger tolerances.
Whatever the reasons, running dedicated services on a different, but supposedly better, standard is not new. Japan did it, BART (San Francisco did it), Spain is doing it in reverse: narrowing the gauge from 1668 mm to 1435 mm for their new high-speed network. The arguments for standardisation mainly centre around economies brought about by the use of such standards. For freight, transhipment between networks is a big hindrance and cost. For passengers, this is less of a problem because they are self-loading and cost little to tranship from one platform to another. Such transhipment already takes place on a massive scale daily at main-line stations in most large cities served by both a local metro rail service and a longer-distance national rail service.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Luca, Derek - the traffic was not bad at all in the 80's.

And the Northern Suburbs did not exist as such. Fourways was smallholds etc.

And SAR provided good transit bus services to link to the airport - via SAR Transport/SAA Buses.

See - all was OK then!

[Luca Lategan]

Then, maybe the biggest flaw of the MetroBlitz was that it was the right service at the wrong time, just like the Red Devil, it was the right locomotive at the wrong time.

If the MetroBlitz was introduced Fifteen years later (1995+) it would have been used much more widely because the traffic situation was getting worse and worse, AND petrol prices was also higher.