Citizen<\/a><\/strong>, the agency said that less than a third of motorists were currently paying their tolls and that it was now up to\u00a0government to\u00a0come up with an acceptable road-funding mechanism.<\/p>\nThis could include a fuel levy – something Sanral has always vigorously opposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever government indicates to Sanral on which funding model should be used, it will be implemented,\u201d said\u00a0Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) manager, Alex van Niekerk.<\/p>\n
Van Niekerk admitted that direct funding from government would be the best option, but said that the National Treasury had already shut down the idea due to a lack of funds.<\/p>\n
He said that, while the agencies would always be able to maintain its current projects, it needed huge capital up-front to begin new projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cNational Treasury was also very clear in the lead-up to this project that they don\u2019t have the funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other option is to do nothing. We will keep on maintaining what is there and the congestion will build up. We are not an agency. We are an SOE level 3 so we are not making any profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it\u2019s not about the tolling. It\u2019s about being able to generate the revenue to enable us to build mega projects which will enable economic growth,” he said.<\/p>\n
This was echoed by\u00a0Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona, who said the organisation was tired of being berated.<\/p>\n
He said that Sanral was an engineering outfit and it was not the agency’s responsibility to raise money for road infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“The government, Treasury and citizens must agree that if we want this infrastructure, how will we pay for it? That shouldn\u2019t be a discussion for engineers,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not on a tolling crusade. If our citizens can give us a pot of money to build without tolling, we will welcome that. \u201d<\/p>\n
Mona said that he would love to see the implementation of a fuel levy, but indicated it would be incredibly difficult to make other provinces pay for Gauteng’s roads.<\/p>\n
\nRead:\u00a0The City of Cape Town\u2019s incredible plan to make mini-bus taxis better than Uber<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sanral has backtracked on its stance against a nationwide fuel levy, stating that it may be the only way to pay for Gauteng’s new roads and infrastructure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11119],"tags":[26,429],"class_list":["post-198020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-headline","tag-sanral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198020","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198020"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198260,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198020\/revisions\/198260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}