Chairperson, members of the NCOP, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I must start by expressing my sincere sympathy and condolences to the family and relatives of the 19 people who were killed last Saturday in a head-on collision between a minibus taxi and a bakkie at Franklin near Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal and to the family of the 15-year-old Mpho Nyembe from Alexandra in Johannesburg, who was killed in a senseless schoolboy prank on Friday, 22 October. We wish all those injured a speedy recovery.
A few weeks ago we stopped 750 vehicles at a roadblock on the main road entering East London in the Eastern Cape. Out of those 750, in 438 vehicles some of the drivers were found to be drunk! I was there and it was between 09:00 and 11:00 in the morning! The drivers of 438 vehicles were found to be drunk, not wearing seatbelts, or driving stolen or unlicensed vehicles, or taxis without the relevant permits. If this is the picture in just one province and one municipality, we have a serious problem indeed. It is why we are experiencing so many accidents and deaths on our roads.
The roadblocks we are manning are meant to make our roads safer. To date, since 1 October 2010, more than 914 000 vehicles have been stopped through the new National Rolling Enforcement Plan, NREP. By the end of this week we will have exceeded our target of one million cars per month, and we are not going to stop. We are going to intensify the new NREP by stopping one million cars per month until South Africans start to behave.
Our agency, the Road Traffic Management Corporation, RTMC, has a multimedia project which we are rolling out in some schools in South Africa. It is a multimedia project which we intend expanding. We intend having more road safety lessons in it, targeting Grade 11 and 12 learners in preparation for their learner driving licence. We have already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Basic Education in regard to this matter. We have already started the process of resuscitating the Junior Traffic Training Centres, as well as allowing children to have practical exposure to road safety.
As indicated above, road safety lessons will be taught under Life Skills in all our schools. We are in the process of developing learning materials and working with some private sector industries in putting together different types of modules. This will assist our efforts to reduce road traffic crashes.
In our Budget Vote this year we articulated the importance of the implementation of effective and sustainable road and rail infrastructure networks and services. So, with our students, we want to have a situation in which, when they get their matric certificates, there is a matric certificate in the one hand and a driving licence in the other. The days should be gone when we classify ourselves as a fast-developing country, yet we have 25-year-olds who can't ride a bicycle, can't ride a horse, can't swim, and can't drive a car. What sort of a developed country is that?
While the role of transport in our economy is well documented, our people are also aware of the importance of transport from their everyday experiences. They go to work, to school, to hospitals and to visit friends and relatives. The presence or absence of an efficient public transport system can be a matter of life and death to a terminally ill person in the rural parts of our country. Transport affects all spheres of our development and human endeavours.
As government, we must show we care about the huge impact that transport has on the lives of our people, as well as on our economic growth and development. Our ability to spearhead growth and development will therefore be partly measured by our success in providing or our failure to provide a transport system consistent with the demands of our economy.
For this reason, I want to make a brief reference to the National Household Travel Survey 2003. According to the survey, 38 million citizens live in households with no access to a car; 14 million learners walk to school; 13,7 million citizens use public transport at least once a week; and 7 million workers and learners use public transport.
Furthermore, there are 10 million vehicles in South Africa, but only 7 million licensed drivers. If we have 7 million licensed drivers, the logical question we must ask is: Who drives the other 3 million vehicles? It is quite clear, however, that despite the growth in motor vehicle use, public transport and walking are still the predominant lifeline forms of mobility for the vast majority of South Africans.
Hon members, it is against this backdrop that in March 2007 Cabinet approved the Public Transport Strategy and Action Plan 2007-20. This was in order to create a lasting legacy of public transportation in South Africa.
The strategy consists of upgraded model fleet facilities, stops and stations; extended hours of operation to between 16 and 24 hours; peak frequencies of 5 to 10 minutes; off-peak frequencies of 10 to 30 minutes; and an hourly night service. Its targets are that 85% of all residents in urban areas will be within one kilometre of the rapid public transport network by 2020; that there will be safe and secure operation monitoring by intelligent transport system control centres; that there will be electronic fare integration and single ticketing when making transfers; that there will be an integrated feeder service, including walking, cycling and taxi networks; and that there will be a car-competitive public transport option which enables strict peak period car use management.
These plans, ladies and gentlemen, require efficient planning, skilled manpower, and funding mechanisms. This approach comprises the Metrorail Rail Priority Corridors and the Gauteng Rapid Rail Link, as well as bus rapid transit corridors. It also includes the recapitalisation and regulation of taxi services. The three spheres of government are already working closely together to ensure the speedy implementation of this plan.
The bus rapid transit, BRT, buses are already operating in the City of Johannesburg and in Cape Town. The department has advanced with BRT plans in metropolitan cities and related provinces, and BRT plans are advanced in the Mangaung, Polokwane, Rustenburg, Mbombela and Buffalo City municipalities.
In line with our public transport strategy and plan, we also have to interrogate the machinery of our road-based public transport in order to develop a national passenger road plan. The plan is now servicing our framework for the integration of the road-based public transport system. Most importantly, it serves as a guide in transforming the subsidised commuter bus regime into an integrated road-based public transport system.
Chairperson, apartheid's spatial distance must become a thing of the past in a democratic South Africa. In this regard, our public transport strategy also stresses greater emphasis on the improvement of passenger rail services, which are both short- and long-distance services. Our plan is centred on reducing the kilometre distance to time or travelling distance. The journey from Johannesburg to Durban should not be measured in terms of kilometres any more. It takes one hour by air, six hours by car and 12 hours by train to travel from Johannesburg to Durban. It takes 2 hours by air, almost 13 hours by car and almost 20 hours by train from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Yet if one uses the EuroStar, it takes about 2 hours from London to Paris or Brussels. The distance of over 2000 km from Beijing to Shanghai, which is scheduled for completion in 2012, will take about three hours by high-speed train.
There was a time when it was said with some pride that there was no hurry in Africa. There was a time when we lived in splendid isolation from the rest of the world. If we persist with the prevailing notion that there is no hurry in Africa, then the world is going to pass us by. If doing business and moving people and goods in South Africa takes forever, the world is going to pass us by. Throughout the world today people and goods move with speed. The slow strive to become faster, and the faster strive to be faster still, yet our long-distance rail in South Africa has stood still.
Our National Transport Master Plan 2005-50 should therefore move from being a plan to an operation. Our emphasis on passenger rail services is premised on the fact that this is a prime mass mover of our people, particularly workers who commute daily between areas of work and their residences. It makes sense therefore that an efficient rail system would massively assist in the resolution of our public transport problems.
Cabinet has also approved the National Passenger Rail Plan, which is our initiative to secure the future of commuter rail by applying the priority corridor strategy to the rail network throughout the country. The intention is to extend rail services to areas previously not covered and to improve the efficiency of the existing passenger rail lines. Here we have funding challenges for refurbishment of rolling stock and purchasing of new coaches. Committed funding of R16 billion to improve our passenger rail system in the next three years could ease the situation but additional funds are required.
In the past four years, as a department we have had a series of challenges with regard to rail security. Scenes of vandalism, cable theft and vandalism of property have featured prominently at our rail platforms. Special attention has been given to improving security measures within the railway environment. This strategy includes a co-operative agreement with the South African Police Service to invest in security-related infrastructure. To date, the construction of police stations at the Cape Town, Durban, Retreat, Bellville and Philippi stations has been completed.
With the reintroduction of the railway police, we have seen a significant drop in crime on our trains, as well as at our train stations. Crime has been cut down by more than 38% to date.
The move to rail does not mean we must abandon our road network. We are merely seeking to implement the appropriate balance of people and goods on both road and rail. In this regard, the Road Infrastructure Strategic Framework for South Africa identified six critical areas for intervention if our roads are to serve as catalysts for required development.
There is one Minister of Transport, and there are nine provincial MECs, and the municipal mayors, who each have responsibility for sections of the 750 000 km of our country's road network. Yet an ordinary South African does not care whether a road in a rural area is owned and maintained by the local authority or by the national authority. All they want is for the road to be usable, whether it is raining or not. We have the capacity in the developed authorities, coupled with limited or no capacity at the developing authority level. The other area which is as critical is the development and maintenance of information and decisions in support systems. Information about the state of a road is very important in determining what maintenance work is required and when this should be done. To give a quick illustration, we know that about 80% of our road network is now older than the 20-year design life. This is based on information from 64% of the roads, primarily national, provincial and in some cities. Only 4% of municipal road information was obtainable in this exercise.
The biggest challenge with our roads is that by the time a problem is visible on the surface it means we are somewhat late with remedial action. On the other hand, when the road is deteriorating without showing the stress on the surface, we often do not see the need to make the necessary interventions. For this reason, we have now agreed as Cabinet and Treasury that there will be dedicated funding for road maintenance right across the board from national and provincial to local levels.
In a context such as ours, where there are competing demands on the fiscus, this competition leads to inadequate allocations and delays, which ultimately means we intervene when it is too expensive to do so. This is often prompted by the outcry about potholes, as we have recently witnessed. I encourage all participants to learn from these lessons.
Most industries in South Africa face globalisation and transformation challenges but the South African transport and logistics industry faces its own peculiarities that impact on the country as a whole. This industry comprises tens of thousands of individual truck and bakkie owners, as well as some of South Africa's largest conglomerates. These all experience reliability and cost-efficiency challenges. They are faced with assets that struggle across inadequate road, rail and port infrastructure. Rail and port services are integral to all freight transport and logistics companies, whether bulk or parcel.
The road versus rail debate has raged since the early 1990s. The spiral, however, started long before that, when maintenance budgets were cut and investment decisions deferred. The downward spiral started when customers started moving off rail. Fewer customers meant less revenue on some routes. This, in turn, made it difficult to justify continued investment in and maintenance of infrastructure. Poor infrastructure resulted in poor service and drove even more customers away. The cycle continues.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is only through huge investment in skills, infrastructure and our knowledge base that our transport system can drive our economy upwards. Lastly, to our matric learners, we hope that as they sit for their examinations the road will rise to meet them. Thank you very much. [Applause.]