Metrorail says delays will be the thing of the past

Loyiso Langeni
06 February 2014

Metrorail says water logged cables were responsible for multiple breaks in signal communication yesterday afternoon at Cape Town station which left thousands of commuters stranded for hours. 

Western Cape Metrorail Regional manger Mthuthuzeli Swartz said it becomes necessary if the robots are not working that controls the movement of the train.

“We do manual authorization which takes time pushing trains to move one by one. Imagine a number of trains that move out of Cape Town, a total of 178 trains. This step was taken to ensure the safety of commuters is not compromised,” Swarts said

Meanwhile Swartz said metrorail is currently replacing all copper cabling with fiber optics. To date 460 km of copper cabling has been replaced which would provide better services to all commuters. 

“We estimate that by June we would’ve completed upgrading existing fiber optic network from Cape Town station to our control centre. We want to assure that these pains that we are going through now are very temporary and very soon we would be able to have an optimal functioning system,” Swarts added.