decade. The 1980s also saw a steady erosion of tonnage as a result of a combination of inefficient management, union intransigence, the failure of agricultural projects to meet production goals, the dearth of spare parts, and the continuing civil war. The bridge at Aweil was destroyed in the 1980s and Wau was without rail access for over 20 years. The line to Wau was reopened in 2010 but Wau became part of South Sudan when it declared independence in 2011. During the civil war in the south (1983–2005) military trains went as far as Aweil accompanied by large numbers of troops and militia, causing great disruption to civilians and humanitarian aid organisations along the railway line. Modernisation Despite the rapidly growing use of roads, rail has remained of paramount importance because of its ability to move at lower cost the large volume of agricultural exports and to transport inland the increasing imports of heavy capital equipment and construction materials for development, such as requirements for oil exploration and drilling operations. Efforts to improve the rail system reported in the late 1970s and the 1980s included laying heavier rails, repairing locomotives, purchasing new locomotives, modernizing signaling equipment, expanding training facilities, and improving locomotive and rolling-stock repair facilities. One project would double-track the line from Port Sudan to the junction of the branch route to Sannar, thus in effect doubling the Port Sudan-Khartoum rail line. Substantial assistance was furnished for these and other stock and track improvement projects by foreign governments and organizations, including the European Development Fund, the AFESD, the International Development Association, Britain, France, China and Japan. Implementation of much of this work was hampered by political instability in the 1980s, debt, the dearth of hard currency, the shortage of spare parts, and import controls. A former rail union official also blamed the Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir who took office in 1989 and continued the previous regime's policy of mass firing, forcing into early retirement or transferring to out of the way locations of qualified railroad employees and replacing them with incompetent political appointees. Rail was estimated in mid-1989 to be operating at less than 20% of capacity. In 2015 the railways were said to have 60 trains available but the maximum speed they could travel was 40 km/h due to poor railway tracks. In 2015 the Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir promised to modernise and upgrade the Sudanese