Spoornet needs a workable plan

The crux of the problem is getting the containers onto the trains at King’s Rest out of City Deep TERRY HUTSON TRANSNET SAYS it intends placing 50% of import/ export containers being shipped via Durban back on rail (by 2010)! The question on everybody’s lips is how? Looking back through FTW files over the past ten years, in the late 1990s Spoornet was operating the CX container service with seven block container trains (50 wagons) on a daily basis between Durban and Gauteng, and another seven block trains running in the opposite direction to the Durban Container Terminal’s King’s Rest marshalling yard. Although each train wasn’t necessarily fully loaded (50 wagons each with two-TEUs equals 100 TEUs per train) the trains operated to a regular schedule. Today Spoornet runs an average of two trains a day and says it hopes to have three each way later in the year. What happened to the other five? With this sort of track record (no pun) Transnet must pardon its critics who respond with scepticism to the latest claims. Short of reintroducing regulatory practices in place circa the pre 1980s, does Transnet really have anything special up its corporate sleeve that will induce customers to abandon road transport? Which is not to say there isn’t any sympathy for the Spoornet position. Apart from the long distance road hauliers, most people in the industry and outside would prefer to see containers going back on rail, if only to clear the roads of congestion. One of the distortions that has unfortunately been widely reported, including to select parliamentary committees, is that rail suffers from inadequate locomotive availability and operates on a system that requires locomotive exchanges en route between Durban port and City Deep, leading to delays along the way. This hoary old tale has been trotted out to explain why it takes between three and five days to rail a container along the King’s Rest – City Deep corridor. And while it may suffice to pull the wool over the eyes of those in parliament it doesn’t convince anyone else. As most shippers know the problem is with getting the containers onto the trains at King’s Rest and getting them out of City Deep at the other end. The actual rail journey takes no more than 12 to 18 hours and does not involve loco changes, although the crews swop over on at least three occasions. But each is done slickly with the trains having to stop only momentarily. For Spoornet to have any realistic chance of winning back containers onto the rail it needs to come up with a workable and believable plan, one that will encourage shippers to think in terms of making the change. So far there has been nothing to suggest that such a plan exists.