E-tolling in Gauteng is the only viable way to pay for the R20 billion spent on improving the province’s freeways, Deputy Transport Minister Jeremy Cronin said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“If we could rewind the clock back to 2007, we would not be embarking on this project [Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project] at all. We have made that very clear,” he told MPs during debate in Parliament on his department’s budget vote.<\/p>\n
“However, alas, there is R20bn debt. It’s been incurred on phase A1 [of the project]. It’s about 180km [of road].”<\/p>\n
Cronin, who said any further spending on the project had “categorically” been put on hold, said paying off the project debt by increasing the fuel levy was not an option.<\/p>\n
Doing so would be unfair to people living in other parts of the country, who would be paying for infrastructure in Gauteng.<\/p>\n
He also ruled out a dedicated Gauteng fuel levy, suggesting it was too onerous and costly to administer.<\/p>\n
Cronin was responding to a call made earlier in the House by the Democratic Alliance’s Ian Ollis, to implement a small fuel levy to cover the cost of the project.<\/p>\n
Ollis told MPs that his party would, if it was in government, immediately cancel the Gauteng e-toll.<\/p>\n
“If the DA was in government we would cancel the Gauteng e-toll immediately. In fact we would never have implemented this wasteful collection system in the first place.<\/p>\n
“A small fuel levy over time would pay for the highways, as it does on the N6 to Buffalo City, and there are other options.”<\/p>\n
Ollis described Gauteng’s e-toll system, which is set to come into effect at the end of the month, as “the world’s most expensive toll collection system”.<\/p>\n
He said it would cost over R1bn a year just to collect the fees.<\/p>\n
“By comparison, a small fuel levy would only cost R4 million per annum to administer and the rest of the money could be put to improving the actual roads,” Ollis said.<\/p>\n
Cronin agreed that “the particular tolling option that has gone forward is very expensive”.<\/p>\n
He further said the government appreciated that there was “great unhappiness” over the introduction of e-tolling, and said he empathised with the Congress of SA Trade Unions, which has called on its members to make the tolls unworkable.<\/p>\n
Opening the debate on Wednesday, Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele said South Africa had a responsibility to service the debt incurred when the project to improve the road network in the province was implemented.<\/p>\n
“It is now public knowledge that South Africa has a financial obligation of R20bn to this effect, escalating to R32bn with interest over the next couple of years.<\/p>\n
“Failure to honour this obligation will adversely affect our country’s credit rating.”<\/p>\n
Ndebele said he was “encouraged” by the fact that, to date, a total of 501,245 e-tags had been sold.<\/p>\n
The transport department received an overall R39bn budget allocation for this financial year, which will rise to R48bn by 2014\/15.<\/p>\n
About R18bn of this is earmarked for roads.<\/p>\n
E-tolling is unreasonable<\/strong><\/p>\n The e-tolling system is so unreasonable that no reasonable person would decide to put it into effect, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance’s (Outa) lawyer Alistair Franklin was presenting argument on why the system should be scrapped.<\/p>\n He said there were disproportionate costs.<\/p>\n “Collecting costs are exceeding the cost of improvement [of the road],” said Franklin.<\/p>\n Outa had a prima facie case, he said.<\/p>\n The minister of transport had to explain the justification for the “bizarre” decision.<\/p>\n According to the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral), the tolls would cost about R21 billion a year. However, the minister had denied the correctness of the figure, said Franklin.<\/p>\n “Decision-making powers have no explanation for it [the amount].”<\/p>\n He said Sanral had also not addressed the figures in its responding affidavit submitted to the court.<\/p>\n Outa was arguing that the introduction of the toll roads would be “practically impossible”.<\/p>\n Sanral had estimated that one million vehicles would use the road a day and that seven percent would be non-compliant.<\/p>\n Franklin said this meant that 70,000 people a day would be non-compliant.<\/p>\n “There was no indication how [Sanral] will deal with those who did not comply,” he said.<\/p>\n The matter continues on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" E-tolling in Gauteng is the only viable way to pay for the R20 billion spent on improving the province’s freeways, Deputy Transport Minister Jeremy Cronin said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1],"tags":[25,1650,10333,429],"class_list":["post-10933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-trending","tag-active","tag-e-tolling","tag-government","tag-sanral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10933"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10935,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10933\/revisions\/10935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}