Dar-Es-salaam City Commuter Train Services have just been halted.
Commuter train services that used to operate within the Dar-es-salaam City and its suburbs have been grounded indefinitely.
An official statement from the management of the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) reveals here that the city train commuting wagons will cease to operate from the first week of June 2025 until further notice.
According to the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority statement, the decision to ground commuter train services in Dar-es-salaam City was taken due to what they described to be ‘unexpected operational challenges!’
Dar-es-salaam, a city of neatly 6 million residents, has always been in dire need of auxiliary means of urban transport, which at the moment relies heavily on the private operated minibuses known as ‘Dala-Dala!’
The city transport sector is also served by the Bus Rapid Transport which deploys full-sized commuter buses, mostly made in China by Golden Dragon, but these have always been unreliable and usually overcrowded.
The Dar Rapid Bus Transport also only cover some selected parts of the coastal city.
Commuter Train Services were introduced in October 2012, by the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) to serve the port city of Dar es Salaam.
The TAZARA commuter train was covering a distance of 30 kilometers from the main station in Dar Es Salaam to Mwakanga, on the outskirts of the city, serving various stops in between.
The Commuter Train Service was introduced at the request of the Tanzanian government, which by then was keen to ease the transport challenges in the city, especially during peak hours.