Transnet to lease stations to private companies

Transnet Rail Infrastructure Manager (TRIM) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the first phase of its Station Leasing Programme in the Western Region. The tender covers three stations in the Western Cape: Dal Josafat and Huguenot in the Paarl/Drakenstein area, and Bitterfontein on the northern West Coast. Private operators are invited to lease, develop and manage the stations’ precincts for an initial period of at least ten years.

Under the proposed structure, bidders will assume control of bundled non-operational assets inside the station perimeters, including land, retail buildings, warehouses, goods sheds and office facilities. The private lessee will be responsible for all refurbishment, security, upgrades, maintenance and commercial exploitation of these properties. Operational rail infrastructure including tracks, signaling and overhead lines, remains explicitly excluded, as do train operations and any rights over slot allocation or network capacity. The lease is therefore a commercial property arrangement rather than a rail-operating concession.

A central condition is that rail must remain the preferred mode of transport within the precincts. Bidders are required to grant rail operations the first right of refusal on any logistics or market opportunities generated by the hubs. The aim is to prevent the sites from evolving into generic real-estate or road-freight facilities and to align them with national policy objectives of shifting freight back onto rail.

The initiative forms part of the structural reforms set out in the 2022 White Paper on National Rail Policy, the 2023 Freight Logistics Roadmap and the Draft National Rail Master Plan. TRIM itself is a product of the mandated vertical separation of Transnet: the former integrated monopoly has been divided into an infrastructure custodian (TRIM), which manages the 30,000 km national freight network and third-party open-access arrangements, and a separate transport operator.

By commercialising station real estate, TRIM is transferring the cost of refurbishing and maintaining dilapidated assets to the private sector, consistent with the broader strategy of private-sector participation to close South Africa’s infrastructure funding gap.Although the three stations fall under Transnet’s freight jurisdiction rather than PRASA’s passenger network, the leasing model echoes the logic of rail devolution.

The National Rail Policy envisages transferring urban commuter services to capable municipalities. By handing localised property management to private operators, TRIM is effectively acknowledging the limitations of centralised state control and creating a precedent for more agile, decentralised administration of rail-related assets—precisely the outcome sought by the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town.