Trucks are tearing up parts of N2, says Sanral
The surge in trucks on national corridors is destroying the road infrastructure in the coal belt, the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) has warned.
The agency, which is responsible for the construction and maintenance of the national road network, said the N2 from Ermelo to Pongola is the hardest hit. It was constructed 40 years ago for about 200 trucks a day, but now is required to carry about 2,500 trucks a day.
“We have experienced a substantial increase in large trucks on some Sanral national road corridors parallel to some of the major rail export lines,” Sanral’s engineering executive, Louw Kannemeyer, told Business Day.
“The worst affected is the N2 from Ermelo to Richards Bay, where we have seen growth in trucks of nearly 140% over the past four years.”
Kannemeyer said the growth in heavy vehicles is outpacing the design assumptions of the road. This can cause roads designed to last for up to 25 years to reach breaking point in three to five years, which is the case with the N2.
SA’s coal deposits are largely located in the northeast quarter of the country, including Mpumalanga and Limpopo, extending to KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State. Part of the N2 runs from Ermelo to Durban.
The rise in road cargo comes amid a dramatic decline in volumes on the Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) coal line, which has been bogged down by a shortage of locomotive parts, cable theft, mismanagement and inefficiencies.
Transnet’s rail performance has been declining since 2017/18, when it was moving 226.5-million tonnes of goods a year. It has since dropped to 150million tonnes.
SA’s coal industry, which has traditionally relied on the railway for cost-effective transport of its cargo, has had to bear the brunt of Transnet’s woes.
This week, Minerals Council SA data showed a decline in coal sales, with producers increasingly relying on road transport to move coal to harbours, including Maputo, “which carries a cost premium compared to rail”.
The highest level of road transport in the coal sector was recorded in 2023, with up to 26-million tonnes of coal transported on the national corridors to various ports.
Coal exported through Richards Bay Coal Terminal, a privately operated facility that handles most of SA’s coal exports, fell to 48-million tonnes in 2023, the lowest level since 1992 and down from the 76million tonne peak in 2017.
The surge heightens pressure on the Treasury to bail out Transnet, whose sprawling logistics infrastructure makes it a systemic risk to the ailing economy.
Transnet, which reported a R1.6bn loss in the six months to end-September 2023, said at the release of its financial results in October that it needed a R100bn bailout. In December, the Treasury provided it with a R47bn guarantee facility to support its recovery plan and to meet its debt obligations.
Transnet’s acting management is under pressure to effect a quick turnaround of SA’s fail
ing port and rail network while scrambling to find permanent replacements for Transnet CEO Portia Derby and TFR CEO Sizakele Mzimela.
Though Sanral said it is applying preventive maintenance measures — including keeping the road surface waterproofed by sealing cracks and applying new surfacing layers every eight to 10 years — it acknowledged that the SA road structure design approach uses natural gravel materials and crushed stone layers to lower costs.
“We then need to strengthen the road structure by reconstructing its layers and adding additional layers using stronger materials,” said Kannemeyer. “We need to add additional climbing or passing lanes or even build additional new carriageways and split the traffic in each direction.”
Last year, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said spending on transport and logistics would be about R351.1bn, including for Sanral to improve the road infrastructure network.
The Road Freight Association, which has previously expressed deep concern at the deteriorating state of SA’s roads and the severe consequences, has called for roads to be funded by the general fuel levy.
“If this levy had been applied solely to roads in the manner required many years ago, this would have ensured that periodic maintenance would occur and we would not have such ‘devastated’ roads as we now experience,” it said.
Sanral in January said it would issue tenders worth about R28bn in the first six months of 2024, giving a muchneeded boost to the construction industry while replenishing the road network.