Gautrain gets lion’s share of provincial works budget

construction work on the gautrain would receive the bulk of the gauteng transport and public works department’s 2006-07 budget, said transport mec ignatius jacobs yesterday.

addressing the media in johannesburg ahead of his budget speech tomorrow, jacobs said that with an increased budget of r6,2bn — compared to r1,5bn in the previous financial year — the department would use r4,6bn for the gautrain.

when put together with other line items, a total of 90% of the budget would be spent on public transport, he said.




acknowledging that the province needed a public transport system that it could be proud of, jacobs said a key challenge for the next financial year was developing infrastructure.




“lots of opportunities are presented to us by gautrain,” he said.


these included the generation of wealth and jobs, as well as the production of knowledge.


“for the first time on the african continent we will have the knowledge that the first world has,” jacobs said.


construction would begin in this financial year — the moving of utilities around oxford road and corlett drive in johannesburg had already started.


land expropriations were going “so smoothly” that jacobs estimated that the target would be reached well before the end of the year.


a 2010 transport legacy strategy was already in place and “we want to use the world cup as a good excuse to get public transport right”.




with congestion on gauteng roads getting worse, jacobs said there were plans to introduce toll roads that were friendly towards public transport — buses, taxis and high-occupancy vehicles would pay less.


“gautengers are generally fed up with congestion but they also don’t want to pay tolls.”


cheaper public transport lanes would be an incentive to make use of lift clubs, or public transport.


intelligent transport systems (its) would also improve commuter safety and roadway capacity. as an example of this, a big electronic board was being built on the ben schoeman highway which could tell commuters how long a particular road would take them to get to the airport and, where necessary, suggest alternatives.




the department’s public works branch would receive 10% of the budget, and five new hospitals would be built in the province, jacobs said.


“there is no alternative and we plan to meet demand now and in the future,” he said.


two new hospitals in soweto would relieve the pressure on chris hani-baragwanath hospital, where, he said, people sometimes slept on the floor.


with gauteng’s population expected to rise to about 15 million by 2014, he said waiting to build more hospitals could leave the province in serious trouble.


natalspruit hospital in erkurhuleni has a sinkhole growing under it and a new, state-of-the-art medical facility was being built.



rail, taxi and bus subsidies would also be rolled out, said jacobs.