The new high-intensity rail routes – for both passengers and industrial goods – will burrow under or through the heart of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging and link up with the existing railway line to Johannesburg, according to top secret Government documents.
To fund the roads to rail proposal, Government is now seriously considering halting the stalled Vaal River intervention programme and diverting its R7billion budget as start-up for its new mass transport approach.
Railway made economic sense as potholes had already made so many roads irreparable that replacing them with underground or surface tracks was now viable – and would also provide Gautrain-style relief for congestion on the R59 highway.
“The well-known advantages of rail over road transport should be noted. Railways will forever banish roads and their never-ending repair and traffic problems – there has never been a pothole on a railway line throughout history,” according to the R250million six-page strategy proposal.
The plan was devised by a secret subsidiary of Rosatom, the official Russian atomic agency seeking business in South Africa and working directly from President Vladimir Putin’s billion-dollar yacht.
The plan, called the Gauteng Transport High Volume (GAT-Vol) strategy, is seen as recognition of the worsening state of Emfuleni’s roads due to mismanagement and corruption, but also due to vastly increasing truck usage taking steel products from the Vaal.
A large laden truck is estimated to cause 20 000 times the damage to roads as a single sedan vehicle.
The proposed strategy simultaneously addresses road, public and industrial transportation challenges in the Vaal and also gives ArcelorMittal’s billionaire owner Lakshmi Mittal a corporate social responsibility investment programme.
Mr Mittal was not available for comment on the proposal by Ion Kurtain Holdings, said to be a front behind several other fronts for all remaining Russian foreign economic activity since sanctions for its Ukraine invasion.
“In this manner, South Africa and Russia as members of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) can contribute to China’s Great Silk Road economic strategy as we firmly believe all Rust Belt regions must be united,” the Ion Kurtain document said.
The strategy envisages using ArcelorMittal’s huge Vaal rail network – said to be the largest privately-owned railway in the Southern Hemisphere – as the basis for the proposed network after Government recently announced the existing Vereeniging/City deep line was open to private usage.
The Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) reacted sharply to the proposed plan.
