Railway safety incidents, such as pedestrian and vehicle collisions at level crossings, are not only tragic but are severely undermining South Africa’s rail recovery plans, Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) CEO Russell Baatjies said on November 14. “We’ve had 36 level crossing incidents just this year, and we’ve lost 41 lives. We all want Transnet to succeed and we all want [the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa] to succeed. We want these new operators to succeed when we open up the network, but it cannot be at the cost of lives,” he said.