Intermodal is the way to go – Cronin

South Africa will not retract its decision to implement an intermodal solution for the transport of freight despite resistance from road hauliers who have had a monopoly for years. “It may come across that we are anti-road for the transport of freight,” said deputy minister of Transport Jeremy Cronin at the Railways and Harbours Conference and Exhibition in Johannesburg, “but that is not the case. The country cannot afford to continue moving the bulk of freight by road. We need a serious rethink of the issue.” He said in the last study done by government in 2008 it found that 935 million tonnes of freight were moved by road at a cost of R171 billion. “This figure does not include the externality costs such as road maintenance, infrastructure upkeep or carbon emissions. Neither did it factor in the cost of accidents to the country.” Cronin said the penny had dropped for government and the major infrastructure spend to revitalise the country’s rail capacity was long overdue. He said with road freight being directly responsible for some 96% of the externality costs it was time to rethink the rail option seriously. “Our railway system has been running on empty for far too long. It is time to bring about change and we have to do it quickly. We don’t envision a system where we go back to the heydays of rail when it had the freight monopoly, but for the foreseeable future we will be investing heavily in rail to address the monopoly by road.” He said a modal balance between road and rail was long overdue. “It is a global trend to combine the two modes and it makes sense for South Africa to embark on this route.” According to Cronin, rail only carries some 23% of the current freight load in the country but only at 10% of the cost. “Rail is cheaper and it becomes even more of an impressive figure if one measures the effort of moving freight. To ensure our trade competitiveness we have no other choice but to bring about a more proportionate movement of goods in the country.”