The Gautrain has a built-in Patronage Guarantee (PG) system that ensures it’s paid enough money to cover all its monthly expenses even if it doesn’t carry a single passenger.
The PG is a mechanism that compensates the Gautrain for low ridership levels. It is backed by the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) and, by extension, funded by the province’s taxpayers.
According to the Automobile Association (AA), the PG cost citizens R2.79 billion just in the 2023/24 financial year alone.
Add this to the R13 billion bill racked up by the PG between 2013 and 2022, the AA estimates that Gauteng residents have collectively spent approximately R16 billion on keeping the commuter railway afloat since its inception over a decade ago, regardless of whether they use it or not.
This has come at the cost of service delivery and the expansion of other, more affordable public transport services to underserviced areas, said the AA.
The association has therefore called to halt the planned expansion of the Gautrain, labelling the idea as a “financial train wreck.”
“It is quite clear that Gautrain failed to deliver on its ridership projections from the outset and now the burden of funding falls on taxpayers – the majority of whom don’t even use the system because it’s too expensive to do so. They are, in effect, subsidising a system that caters to the elite who are already mobile,” it said.
“We stand firm in our opposition to the extension of the Gautrain network, and the continued funding of the system through the Patronage Guarantee. A serious rethink of the expansion of the system is needed, particularly since it has shown that it cannot deliver on the numbers it projects and is, therefore, more of a liability than an asset.”
2026 Gautrain Expansion map
Goodbye government grants
The PG was instrumental in getting the Gautrain approved back in 2005, without it, the railway would likely not have existed today.
In conception stage, the Gautrain was a prohibitively expensive and unproven greenfield project that raised many eyebrows, and to ensure that it would be able to continue operations, the GPG offered to subsidise the service should it not be able to entice enough paying commuters to cover its costs.
Cabinet consequently approved the project in 2005, it broke ground in 2006, carried its first passengers in 2012, and the rest is history.
That said, the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) is well aware of the contentious PG and the burden it places on Gauteng residents and has stated that it intends to ween itself off the government handout and become a standalone entity (financially speaking) in the coming years.
The current Gautrain concession expires in 2026, after which the system will be handed over to the GPG which intends to expand it from the current 80km in length to a substantial 230km at a cost of R120 billion.
Earlier in 2024, the GMA said that the expansion would connect previously underserved communities to the country’s main economic hubs, which is likely to lead to elevated rider figures.
To incentivise the use of the railway by individuals in these areas, the GMA also plans to introduce special reduced fares for select travellers, including indigent families, pensioners, and scholars.
The Gautrain is already paid off, hence, revenue brought in through commercial partnerships that were previously earmarked for paying off debt can now be used to strengthen its financial sustainability.
The GMA said it will expand the coverage of Smart Driver’s Licence Testing Centres like those currently available at the Centurion and Midrand stations, too, as well as partner with established construction companies to develop the land on which it has ownership rights for lease to other businesses.
These interventions are expected to boost finances to the point where the Gautrain could become self-sufficient and there would be no reason to continue relying on the PG, the GMA indicated.
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