Friends of the Rail Forum

Well, he's entitled to his opinion from Canada, but I think most would simply be happy if an overground rail commuter network could be developed...

KENYA NEEDS AN UNDERGROUND

By railwaysafricaeditor / January 20, 2011 / Kenya

According to Oman Ondus, a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya currently working in Canada, Kenyan planners should consider building underground railways. Commenting on the envisaged light rail system in Nairobi, which he thought would do much to alleviate the problems associated with matatu minibuses, he pointed out that “major cities elsewhere now prefer smoother underground subways that avoid street level challenges”. Heavily used examples were to be found in cities such as Seoul, Moscow, Tokyo, London, New York and Paris, carrying millions of commuters every working day (some as many as 10 million).

Underground railways, Ondus says, “stimulate subterranean economic activities such as restaurants, coffee shops, book stores, clothing stores and pharmacies. For instance the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Seoul and Toronto have built impressive subway-level multi-billion dollar business centres that handle millions of customers daily.”

Egypt, he writes, is the only country in Africa with an underground railway. Even South Africa, “with its economic muscle, has not implemented such a transit mode even for its commercial capital, Johannesburg. Pundits have attributed this to past apartheid policies which would have made it uneconomic to run on a segregated basis.”

So, does Gautrain not run underground from Marlborough through Sandton and Rosebank to Braamfontein (close to Park Station)?
Perhaps Ondus really means a grand underground railway "system" of several interconnecting lines and stations, rather than a single underground railway.

He forgets that, although overground, SA's Metrorail has essentially all the characteristics of any other major suburban commuter railway system (arguably including crime) -- very similar to the peripheral regions of the London "Underground" (particularly the Metropolitan and District lines) which incidently probably has more track laid overground than underground.

Perhaps the cold, Canadian weather has frozen Ondus' research capabilities!

I REALLY don't understand how he can bring apartheid into all of this?

Also, Cape Town's water table is much to shallow to ever allow an underground system. There was some bull story a few years back about the line from Woodstock to Cape Town being buried to create something like 26 street blocks?