GOOD and BAD news for PRASA and Transnet
· The South African
South African railways’ PRASA and Transnet are back in the headlines. The two state rail entities are chasing very different versions of a comeback. One is hauling coal again, to a good standard. And the other can’t get a single mainline passenger train out of the yard.
As such, Transnet freight rail is showing genuine signs of life since COVID. It railed 165 trains to Richards Bay Coal Terminal last week alone. That puts coal shipments on track for 65 million tonnes (Mt) by the end of 2026. Better locomotive availability helped. So did sharper security, which has clamped down on the dreaded cable theft and vandalism, the twin diseases that have plagued it for years.
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Transnet Freight Rail now ships more than 170Mt a year. That’s up from roughly 140Mt in 2022. But it’s still nowhere near the peak of 226Mt hauled back in 2016. This was before years of underinvestment, theft and maintenance backlogs gutted the network and cost several executives their jobs.
PRASA AND TRANSNET
Coal, iron ore and general freight roughly split the annual tonnage three ways. The Department of Transport’s (DOT’s) Minister Barbara Creecy wants to see 250Mt of total rail freight by 2029. Eleven private train operating companies are gearing up to help get there, some reportedly launching this year and in 2027.
Unfortunately, cable theft remains the villain of this story. PRASA and Transnet has a solution though: A long-term answer is in-cab and radio-based signalling. It leans on radio links between trains and wayside systems instead of trackside cable. Doing so will leave thieves with far less copper worth stealing. And it should improve train safety at higher speeds, too.
GOING NOWHERE SLOWLY
A slow and steady return to form for Transnet lies in contrast to a dormant long-distance service for PRASA. Image: FileMeanwhile, PRASA mainlines are going nowhere slowly. Creecy confirmed recently there is currently no mainline long-distance passenger service running anywhere in the country. The DOT put out a Request for Information (RFI) back in August 2025, hunting for ways to relaunch three long-distance routes:
- Gauteng to Musina
- Gauteng to Durban
- Gauteng to Mbombela
Sadly, the proposals came back and they were so expensive, flying the same routes would be cheaper. Creecy’s problem is big: How do you make a train cheaper than a plane, when the entire process relies on a state subsidy just to survive? And rhe department days it wants another R35 billion from Treasury, via the Budget Facility for Infrastructure, to fix rail lines and signalling.
PRASA AND TRANSNET TO SHARE TRIPS?
The first and best option right now is for PRASA and Transnet to run mixed trains, cross-subsidising passenger carriages with freight revenue on the same lines. The lines, it’s worth noting, belong to Transnet outright. Creecy’s says to break-even, PRASA needs to complete 300-million passenger journeys a year. 101 million trips were recorded in the 2025/26 financial year. And the ambitious target is 600 million by 2030/31, to match pre-pandemic passenger figures.
A team of UK experts is working out whether trains can run every 15 minutes instead of hourly, using the infrastructure that already exists. More frequent trains mean better economies of scale, which is exactly what a subsidy-dependent services desperately need. Creecy has given herself until the end of this term of government, 2029 at the latest, to make it work …
But what do you think of the current situation with PRASA and Transnet? Can anything beyond a taxpayer bailout save these entities? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below …