In the late 00s there was a project with many specialists working together to investigate the feasibility of sinking the rail lines from Salt River to the CBD in order to release land for development.
People described it as bold (when actually it was just long-term). Some people didn’t like how it would change Woodstock (look how not adding land to that market has turned out).
Very few people really know why it didn’t go beyond feasibility. There are a LOT of factors and the story isn’t entirely mine to tell. But here’s a really crude summary of factors:
Institutional capacity and trust
The study was mandated under a broader PRASA agenda to look at long-term land based financing to:
- generate revenue for ongoing modernization of infrastructure,
- reduce reliance on the national fiscus (i.e. our taxes) for commuter subsidies,
- increase densities (and thus trips and efficiencies) along rail corridors, specifically around underutilized stations.
This was a plan that involved different market partners at different stations, thinking about the whole system and all 3 objectives mentioned above, while also contributing to broader spatial justice goals; and working together with the City as a key planning partner.
This work requires significant institutional capacity, and trust with long-term partners. While PRASA have managed to do some of this land based financing programme (for example see Heideveld Station plans, Goodwood is also nice example of partnering with the City and Social Housing Companies to get the densities along corridors right, for the right groups), trust levels and institutional capacity have not been a South African strong suit in the years gone by.
The land itself
The land from town to Salt River along the rail way line is largely “reclaimed land”. (It used to be the beach, guys!)
As a result, there are high water tables and heritage factors (buried ships, among other factors) to address, drastically pushing up the build costs.
Maintaining available mobility services during construction
People (far more then than now) rely on the trains running all the way into town. Operational continuity was a key concern — to keep people on trains, we’d have to bury a few lines at a time to keep some operational (with more transfers at Salt River). Coupled with the water mentioned earlier, this costs a lot to build — you’d essentially have to build really long and narrow reverse swimming pools one at a time and keep bashing down KMs of retaining wall each time you sunk another length, to open it back up again. This also requires a few lengths before you have width enough to start developing, which means a long time before the project starts getting revenues in.
The other option is to sink all lines, in cross sections, creating “developable blocks” as you go.
But, that means a good many years of offering alternate transport from Salt River to town. Once people have made that modal shift, why go back?
Which starts to beg the question: could we viably just have Salt River as the central station, with one or two frequent trains and road based mobility options offered from there? (This was beyond scope to properly look at, but was one I and many others wanted to look into).
Market absorption rate and urban management
We’re talking a lot of land. The market would take a couple of decades to absorb all of the opportunities created, and in the mean time open spaces would need to managed, which has costs and mandate questions. Who’s job is it anyway to manage temporary green spaces on PRASA land?
Further, there was a lack of understanding of long-term infrastructure and land development programmes — so some were jittery about “flooding the market”. Given the gentrification we’ve seen since then, I reckon that could have had some positive benefits for existing communities.
Coordination
The vision (whether sinking the lines, or just stopping at Salt River and having a different land based transport-development mix between there and town) would need all sorts of institutional partners — funders, social and market housing developers, commercial developers, various levels of public works for new government offices, schools, hospitals etc, and operational budgets for new parks, services etc.
Ideal in practice, but our track record for this scale of long-term committed joint action across such a diversity of role players is not good. We did once reclaim land from the sea, though…
(PS. I’m not under any illusion that we don’t really need to fix rail, and this probably needs to get some good progress before getting us back to any conversations like this one. Part of fixing rail, and the city, is these sorts of projects — be it in this inner city stretch, or along new proposed lines such as Blue Downs…).
