SIEMENS

Tshepo Maseko is sipping his cocktail at News Café Sandton, currently his favorite bar. The keys to his BMW are on the table in front of him. With his fast car, Maseko really does get through Johannesburg’s seemingly endless traffic jams more quickly than do other drivers. "But the trick isn’t the more powerful engine," says Maseko, an actor from the poplar soap opera Isidingo. "The trick is to always take the right shortcut at the right time of day."

Sometimes Johannesburg strikes Maseko as being overly full - too many people, too few trees, too much air pollution. This doesn’t diminish his enthusiasm for South Africa’s largest city, however. "I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The different people, the music, the vibes - the city is on fire. I love Jo’burg," he says. Jo’burg, as many South Africans call Johannesburg, is his hometown. Maseko grew up in the township of Soweto, attended acting school - and made his own way. The soap opera in which Maseko appears is a kaleidoscope of South African society. It celebrates the community despite the weighty legacy of apartheid, despite the uncontrolled HIV/AIDS epidemic, and despite enormous economic inequality. Some of the viewers, living in much less favorable conditions, may dream of doing what Maseko did.

Many young, well-educated South Africans do, in fact, come to live in Johannesburg. Like the prospectors of the 19th century, they hope to find work and a golden future there. Now that production of gold, once South Africa’s principal export, is declining - many deposits have been completely depleted - the resource of the future for a growing number of people is education. For good jobs, people are even willing to leave the beaches of South Africa’s other metropolis, Cape Town.

As population has grown, however, it has come at a price. Johannesburg appears to be growing uncontrollably. In fact, it is likely that over the next 5 years it will converge with Pretoria, the South African capital, to form an agglomeration of roughly 15 million inhabitants. That’s a major challenge because public transit is rare, and most people avoid it because it is often inconvenient and associated with the city’s high crime rate. Nevertheless, things are set to change, as the Soccer World Cup has brought substantial investments in infrastructure that are designed to improve the standard of living in the long term.

From Road to Rail. Siemens Mobility Director Kevin Pillay, who supports Metrorail, the operator of the commuter rail system in South Africa, firmly believes things will get better. The public information systems at major stations are being overhauled just in time for the World Cup. Siemens is responsible for the design, implementation, and integration of these new systems. "The modern signaling, public address and display information systems we are installing will not only increase the efficiency of the entire system, which will be in full operation during the World Cup; they will also enhance its reliability, safety and attractiveness," says Pillay. "Hopefully, more people will take the train after the World Cup, because we desperately need to move a lot of our road traffic to rail."

Whereas the Metrorail project uses existing rails and trains, a line unlike any the African continent has ever seen before is currently under construction. With parts of the route high above the ground on concrete pylons, the Gautrain, as the system is known, will link Pretoria and Johannesburg using standard gauge track rather than the narrow gauge commonly used in South Africa.