Sanral e-tag numbers a lie: Outa
Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance claims Sanral is fabricating its e-tag sales numbers to more than double the reality, citing its own research, counting physical e-tags on vehicles using Joburg roads.
According to the latest figures released by Sanral, Gauteng road users have purchased 890,388 e-tags, to date – almost 40% of the 2.3 million monthly road users in the province.
However, using a “statistically sound” sample size of over 4,300 vehicles on freeways and non-freeways in Gauteng, Outa did a physical count of e-tag users, revealing that the true penetration figure is as low as 15% on freeways.
| Environment | Sample | # with e-tags |
% tagged |
| Freeways | 2,098 | 317 | 15% |
| Non-freeways | 2,236 | 212 | 9% |
| Total | 4,334 | 529 | 12% |
E-tag numbers
“Obviously, it is the freeway-user count that matters in this exercise, but the off-freeway count helps to corroborate our findings,” said Outa chairman, Wayne Duvenage.
“One would expect non-freeway tag rate to be lower as there will be around 33% of vehicles in Gauteng that do not touch the freeways.”
According to Outa, extrapolating the percentages to the number of unique vehicles using Gauteng’s freeways per month, the maximum number of e-tags in use is probably closer to 350,000.
If the penetration rate was pushed to 20%, then the number would be around 450,000 – which is still half of the number that Sanral is touting, Outa said.
Wayne Duvenage
“We realise that Sanral’s e-tag numbers include those issued to car rental & other fleet vehicles which are stationed in other parts of the country, but even if one adds these into the mix (no more than 50,000), the number still falls well short of Sanral’s e-tag sales figure,” Outa said.
In a statement pushing its figures, Outa called on Sanral to come clean and provide the actual computerised e-tag counts passing under the gantries.
“We have exposed their misleading behaviour in the past and once again, our research confirms our suspicion that Sanral is providing extremely misleading information, clearly aimed at trying to inflate the numbers and create an impression that people are accepting of the system,” Duvenage said.
Information on Outa research
- Counts conducted between 5 and 11 December, the bulk on work days.
- Assumption – people who have purchased e-tags will have fitted these to their vehicles and the fitment is generally executed as per the instructions – on the front windscreen.
- Seven different freeway off-ramps were counted and the counts vary between 10% and 27% (Marlboro being highest).
- A statistical sample size of 2000 vehicles in the population of 2,3 million vehicles (Sanral’s number of unique freeway users in an average month) gives a theoretical margin of error between 1.3% and 2.2% at a 95% confidence level.
More on e-tolls and e-tags
How many e-tags has Sanral really sold?
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