Trains in Cape Town seriously messed up today

The trains today in Cape Town seem to be very messed up. I was trying to reach the 8:10AM train at Monte Vista station. I was about one minute away when it arrived at 8:04AM. According to official documentation, passengers should try and be there five minutes before a train is scheduled to arrive in case it arrives early. Up to five minutes before or after the scheduled time is considered on time because of delays and catching up.

After that issue, I decided that I have time to walk the 25 minutes to reach the 8:30AM train at Vasco station and with that I would get to Salt River station which is one station away from Observatory station which is where I need to go. I got to Vasco station at 8:24AM, a train only came at 8:45AM.

At Salt River station there was already a big crowd waiting for the train. A bit more than ten minutes later a train came past and did not stop. Normally the intervals that time of the morning are fifteen minutes between trains. More or less fifteen minutes later another one came past that did not stop. After that I decided to walk the fifteen minutes to my work in Mowbray.

Metrorail annoyances

The last couple of days have not been a great experiences for Metrorail customers in the Cape Town area.

There have been several cancellation announcement in the morning while people need to get to work as well as announcements of delays. Often the delays are caused due to signal power failure. After all of these years of that, I would expect engineering to come up with a way to make these more robust that a slight drizzle doesn't kill the entire system.

Yesterday morning was another great example where trains were just standing on the tracks two sides of a station. I know that they were not waiting for a line change due to construction work going on. Yesterday evening was a case of an announcement of a delay of 8 minutes and about 13 minutes later when the next train was scheduled to show up, there was an announcement of a delay of 12 minutes. This morning was at least nothing happening for 20 minutes.

Metrorail annoyances

The last couple of days have not been a great experiences for Metrorail customers in the Cape Town area.

There have been several cancellation announcement in the morning while people need to get to work as well as announcements of delays. Often the delays are caused due to signal power failure. After all of these years of that, I would expect engineering to come up with a way to make these more robust that a slight drizzle doesn't kill the entire system.

Yesterday morning was another great example where trains were just standing on the tracks two sides of a station. I know that they were not waiting for a line change due to construction work going on. Yesterday evening was a case of an announcement of a delay of 8 minutes and about 13 minutes later when the next train was scheduled to show up, there was an announcement of a delay of 12 minutes. This morning was at least nothing happening for 20 minutes.