One lady from whom we heard, however, said that there was no warning to passengers when the train was about to reach Mahalapye, Serule and so on. In the middle of a pitch-dark night, and with everyone asleep, that could be tricky. In the good old days – i.e. then – the guard/conductor on the mail train used to warn individual passengers that their destination was approaching and that they should prepare to leave. Yes, he knew from his records where each one had paid to go. And also on the old Blue Train, passengers were warned that they would be reaching Palapye in another five minutes. With the new Blue Train it is apparently different. There is no warning about imminent stops. Passengers are expected to know when they should wake up – they are all adults, after all – and, as a result, perhaps get off at the wrong place. But the Blue Train’s current schedule worries me. A quick look at the figures recently released by Statistics Botswana suggests that with a decreasing population there may be little reason for including Lobatse in BR’s passenger train schedule. Fortunately for Lobatse, for the moment, BR’s inability to undertake really comprehensive market research has given it a precarious lifeline. If BR had made a genuine attempt to identify its market, it might have omitted Lobatse
from its plans. But let’s take a look at those new figures. Lobatse, in 2011, had a population of 29,007. In 2016, this figure is projected to drop to 28,235, in 2021 to decrease further to 26,483 and in 2026 to 24,085. These are spectacular figures. In other words, if BR had the slightest clue as to what it is doing it would have dumped Lobatse having concluded that only few people are likely to travel by train either from there or to there. Of course, the possibility, indeed likelihood that BR will eventually look at its figures and conclude that as far as it is concerned, Lobatse is as much a relic of railway history as say, those long ago stops, Mosupabatho or Foley. But, as a Lobatse fan, I am hopeful that the situation is not as bad as it seems. But then, it is not at all clear how anything today interlocks with anything else. There have been those plans to make Lobatse a free port, to help it to capitalise from the Kgalagadi highway and its links with Mahikeng and to get the BMC back on its feet. And it is of course the intended beneficiary of the two-multi million pula projects – milk and leather. Information about the former, however, appears to be virtually non-existent whilst the continuing delay with the latter does tend to induce skepticism. How many times now have we been told about those 15 trainees currently in Florida? Clearly Statistics Botswana has come to its own conclusions about these formulas for turning Lobatse around, and is unimpressed. All those involved need to take serious note. But if the newly released figures represent a dismaying scenario for Lobatse, they will also provide zero reassurance for people in Phikwe where Statistics have been unimpressed by the emergence in new guise of yet another regional development agency, SPEDU, of steel or indeed the new bridge at Platjan.,
