Passengers flock to get on board Gautrain

Monday, June 14, 2010

Pretoria - Passengers flocked to get on board the Gautrain this weekend to see what the rage has been all about since it began operations last week.

"A tsunami of about 40 000 passengers were carried on Saturday and Sunday as many Gautengers used it for a fun family outing.

"Along with airport travelers and the added demand of World Cup passengers, this inevitably resulted in long queues at stations and long waits for trains," said Bombela Concession Company spokesperson, Kelebogile Machaka.

Additional security and operational staff were deployed and trains were run at 8 minute intervals as opposed to the 30 minute intervals that were originally planned.

"As these additional services were introduced, the signaling system automatically slowed all trains to a 30km/h speed until the headways between trains had evened out.

"This process took about 30 minutes during which time some passengers experienced abnormally long waits for trains to arrive or depart," said Machaka.

However, passenger volumes began easing on Sunday afternoon.