Quantifying the economic benefits of gauge changes on the South African core railway network

Abstract

In its white paper, the Department of Transport (2017) envisages a future South African core railway network which requires the conversion and construction of over 8 500 km of standard-gauge railway track by 2050. The scale of the project would undeniably have a large cost attached to it, which needs to be well understood before any of the construction takes place. Numerous studies regarding railway gauge have been conducted within South Africa, but no single paper has addressed the issue of which specific railway corridors could economically benefit from a standard-gauge intervention. The purpose of this study was to identify which corridors in the South African core network could potentially benefit from a gauge change intervention. These identified corridors were then economically evaluated to determine which of the corridors would outperform the base case, which was set as the Market Demand Strategy (MDS) plan. Finally, it was determined if any of the corridors identified outperformed the base case, to simulate how the operations of the corridor would be affected. The conclusions of the study indicated that all the corridors in the South African core network should follow the plans proposed in the MDS to achieve the maximum return for the analysis period, except for the Natal corridor. It was identified that the Natal corridor would benefit most from a standard-gauge single line which would run concurrently with the narrow-gauge system transporting containers and other general freight along the corridor.