Football Fridays | What it takes to provide safe rail service

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01]All right, welcome back everybody as we come to you from Park Station in downtown Johannesburg. And goodness me, this is a vibe of activity. We're struggling to hear ourselves, but I suppose that's just the feeling of uh the World Cup and the soccer world cup that is going to be kicking off on the 11th of June. And this is PRA's sendoff to Buffana Buffana as they leave South Africa. Of course, that's happening on Sunday, but tonight also a big match that they are going to be playing tonight as well. and PRAA as always offering uh these wonderful services to and from the stadium. But of course today, Sikita, we're joined by a lot of Praser officials and it's a pleasure to welcome Isham Emmeran who of course is the CEO of Prasa. So nice to have you and welcome to Morning Live.

[00:00:44]>> Thank you so much Lean and good morning to you as well, Sakina. We are really pleased to have you here at Fox Station today.

[00:00:51]>> It's it's fantastic to be here and I know Sakina and myself were both saying as we arrived here, it's been a while.

[00:00:56]It's been a minute since you've both been here, but it looks absolutely incredible. I must say it's a great job.

[00:01:02]You were saying it's a 10-year program that you've been embarking on so far.

[00:01:05]>> Yeah, it's been a decade of improvement that you've seen happening at Park Station. What we are keen about is when you when you walk into Park Station, you get the sense that you're walking into a gateway to to opportunity at the station itself. Commuters have got access not only to retail, commercial, even the banking sector that we have here. And then not to speak, we're in the CBD.

[00:01:26]We're in the heart of the Johannesburg CBD which commuters are accessing. And as you can see already very early this morning, a great hive of activity in Johannesburg.

[00:01:37]>> Isan, one of the things uh with South Africa and passenger rail has always been safety, which has been key. But I must say, stepping into this space, you certainly do feel safe. There's nothing that says, you know, I'm in imminent danger or anything like that. And that of course is a key aspect of the service that you provide.

[00:01:55]>> Sakina, you are spot on. We we take the concerns of our commuters very seriously. We do annual customer satisfaction surveys and two of the key things that come up is safety, personal safety as well as reliability of the system. As you correctly say, you you feel safe in the environment. We have put a lot of effort in ensuring we've beefed up on our security plan, additional physical boots on the ground.

[00:02:18]We're starting to roll out now our technology in the security space and then when it comes to reliability we see now that our on-time performance is sitting above 90%. Where in the past this was sitting at about 60%. So a lot of lot of attention has gone into these two specific aspects listening to our commuters and that is massive because if you want people to use the service you it has to be reliable. People need to know that they can arrive at work on time and they're not going to be stuck because somehow the train just stopped in the middle of nowhere and nobody knows what's going on and we're sitting there for 30 minutes to an hour.

[00:02:56]>> Absolutely. And and one of the big contributors to that has been the fact that we've rolled out our brand new modern trains the people's train. I'm not sure if you've been on the train but this has contributed greatly to reliability ensuring we're running a predictable service. M >> give us an idea. I mean, we're here and I know that we're going to be walking around. This is just the first hour. We want to go down to the different platforms and and really take a look and see how it's working, but give us an idea how many trains are running from here every day. Um the the kind of amount of passengers that you are processing. Give us some of those numbers so we get a better idea.

[00:03:32]>> That's a very good question, Leanne. And I think I'm going to start off by saying, you know, where we were four years ago, >> we only had four out of our 40 priority priority corridors operational. That was due mainly to the theft and vandalism we saw.

[00:03:45]>> Today, as we speak, we have recovered 35 of the 40 corridors. This is nationally speaking.

[00:03:51]>> We come from a very low base after the the theft and vandalism. 3 4 years back, we were transporting 4 million passengers perm.

[00:03:59]>> Just this year that we have passed, we've broken into the 100 million passenger trips for the year. We've seen doubling on the past year. We've seen a 30% on on the the recent year in terms of passenger growth. And the minister has set us a very ambitious and and target that we need to meet. We need to grow this numbers through to 600 million passenger trips >> and we have to do that. We are mass transport mover. Uh we have already done our modeling. We need to get to the 300 400 million mark as quickly as possible and that will assist with the sustainability of rail operations in the country. But that's of course you talking nationally. What about here? I mean this obviously being a hive of activity but what are we dealing with in terms of transportation?

[00:04:41]>> So so firstly this is an intermodal hub.

[00:04:43]I was mentioning earlier if you look at the continent this is probably in the top three in terms of the biggest intermodal transport hub that we have.

[00:04:52]You not only have commuter rail, you've got your long-distance buses, you've got your taxi facility here. Uh Sakina, you asked me earlier about the longd distance trains as well. It's something that we are still working on to improve in terms of getting the long distance up and running. So you've got and and from park station itself, you can access anywhere in fa there are corridors we need to bring back lean. Uh we are still working on getting the line through to far past the orange farm area. We are busy working on that line. Within the next two weeks or 3 weeks, we should be extending that line through to lens. The team is currently on the ground getting the approvals for that. And then a very important corridor for Hoen is on the east end, the Davidton corridor.

[00:05:35]>> We have got a lot of pressure to bring back Davidton. It's a priority for PRAA, priority for the commuters. The plans are in place. We are dealing with the funding to ensure we can roll out that project. But there is some of the key things we still need to roll out.

[00:05:48]>> And of course, Isham, historically, you know, there there have been issues around PRAA. We spoke to security but the trains themselves the actual uh ecosystem when it comes to from building those trains up to getting them on the tracks and moving people around you know how we doing on that score >> you know this is a flagship project for cross in fact I want to add it's a flagship project for the country we have established a manufacturing facility in South Africa these trains are being built here in South Africa by South Africans we've got an order espa for 600 of these new trains savvantu we've already received about 300 of them you already see them in operation these are modern trains it's got all the comfort features got all the safety features it deals with universal access it's got the communication controls with on the train uh both visual as well as audio that we have there and also the capacity improvements it bring so where we have rolled these trains out we have seen a very positive response coming from our commuters people have come back the peak periods are pretty full. We are still saying on the off peak there opportunities for more people to to to board the train and I think in light of what we see with the fuel increases.

[00:07:01]Rail is the mode that you should be coming to at the moment.

[00:07:04]>> I tell you what, we are here also in Ascendo for Bafana Bafana. They take on Nicaragua. Last time we'll be able to see them in action here on home soil before the kickoff of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. But of course, if you are someone who goes to the stadium, there is nothing more frustrating than driving there and trying to find parking. So, you have come on board for tonight's game. Talk to us about how, where, where do people get on, what is the process for tonight.

[00:07:38]>> You know, we've seen our sport build a nation. We all remember the World Cup in 2010. Parasa was also one of the key transport providers back then. We saw and it's not just with the football.

[00:07:49]You've seen at PRAA how we've partnered with various sporting codes be it rugby be it the football be it cricket and we access most of the stadiums around the country. We were very pleased when Sappa reached out to us to be part of the sendoff celebrations. I will be on the train this afternoon as well. I'm looking forward to the game later this evening and we and we're encouraging everybody to use the train to get to Orlando Stadium. A return ticket will cost you 10 rand from park station to the stadium and back. As you said, you'll get there on time. You'll get there safely and you'll get the the atmosphere the on the train whether it's rugby, whether it's football, whether it's cricket, we see it happening all over.

[00:08:28]>> Yeah.

[00:08:28]>> Is thank you very very much for talking to us. So I know there's a big event that's taking place today. I mean we're here in the morning, but this seems to be a whole day celebration which eventually kicks off I think today. It's happening from 1:00 until 4:00. And that of course being on the day of the game.

[00:08:45]So uh tonight Bfana Bafana take on Nicaragua. It's a friendly. It's happening at Orlando. And uh this is of course the official sendoff event for PRAA that will be happening. Good luck and thank you so much for talking to us and having us here this morning and looking forward to walking around and showing South Africa what's actually happening.

[00:09:02]>> Yeah, we'll be going down to the platforms. We'll be giving away tickets, merchandise, you name it. So if you're around here, you might get lucky. But for now, it's back to studio.