Monday, July 19, 2010

Should the Gautrain white calabashes be scrapped?

It has been confirmed that Gautrain white calabashes are not so Ayoba as I argued here and here. With 24000 passengers carried in the first month ( 08 June to 08 July I presume) and their website showing us the number of routes covered by these buses and their frequency I throughly calculate the average number of passengers per trip. The average number of passenger carried over a month is 870 passengers per day while the train itself carried an average of 12 903 passengers per day, short of 87 097 which was project, though the link is not yet finalized (indeed, politicians and supporters may argue that the vast number of passengers will move between Pretoria and Johannesburg). Now, I also made some calculations to see how many average passengers were carried during the peak hours if I use the information given (Frequency of trains and buses for both peak and off peak hours...and here is what I calculated and found;

Now, going back to the the question...should Bombela scrap off their service or should one have to wait and see what happens when the other stations in the Johannesburg and the Hatfield are opened? I think they Bombela in partnership with Metro Bus, City of Tshwane and Ekhurhuleni Metropolitan start encouraging their passengers to make use of their respective municipality Metro Buses. If this is not done, Bombela risk its bus service being cross subsidised by its rail service which will lead to price increases.


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