City to work with Sanral on funding

Undertaking to act as partners on congestion crisis in Winelands

ROADS agency Sanral will work with the City of Cape Town to address congestion in the Western Cape, after the Constitutional Court put paid to plans by the agency to toll national roads in the Cape Winelands.

“As reaffirmed by our new chief executive, we will continue to engage the City of Cape Town to find a solution to the growing congestion crisis in the Winelands area. Discussions with the city have already started,” Sanral (SA National Roads Agency) spokesperson Vusi Mona said yesterday.

On Friday, the Concourt ruled in favour of the City of Cape Town and ordered Sanral to pay the city’s legal fees for the fiveyear court battles in which the council opposed plans to toll sections of the N1 and N2.

Sanral had applied for leave to appeal against a Supreme Court judgment in favour of the city, which the Concourt dismissed with costs.

Mayco member for Transport and Urban Development, Brett Herron welcomed the ruling.

“Sanral has no choice but to concede that they followed an improper and unlawful process which, if it was left unopposed, would have resulted in Western Cape road users paying R62 billion in toll fees over a period of 30 years,” said Herron.

“We called on Sanral at times to refrain from wasting taxpayers’ money on further legal actions. We pointed out that the city has won every round in court since we launched our review application on March 28, 2012 to set aside the approvals that enabled them to toll sections on the N1 and N2 freeways in Cape Town,” he added.

Mona said over the past two months the roads agency had consistently said it was embarking on a new consultative approach with stakeholders to find common ground on road infrastructure development.

Mona said the roads agency was not only pursuing engagements with the Western Cape and City of Cape Town but with other municipalities and provinces such as eThekwini, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State to unlock economic growth potential and contribute to regional development.

“This is the new perspective within the roads agency which recently-appointed chief executive Skhumbuzo Macozoma seeks to ingrain. Our constitution requires of us, as the different spheres of government, to work together in order to deliver services to citizens,” he said. Mayor Patricia De Lille said the City was willing to work with Sanral and provide some of the funding for the necessary projects.

“In 2015, I extended an olive branch to Sanral and made an offer asking the road agency to work with the city by looking at what infrastructure projects are needed for road maintenance and to ease traffic flow. Instead of working with the city to find alternatives, more than R20 million has been used in a five-year long court battle to halt the tolling project,” said De Lille. –