Concourt throws out toll bid by Sanral

THE Constitutional Court has ruled against a proposal to toll sections of the peninsula’s major freeways.

The court dismissed the proposal by the South African National Road Agency (Sanral) to toll the N1 and N2 in parts of the city and the province.

The City of Cape Town and the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) welcomed the court’s decision.

Brett Herron, mayco member for the transport and urban development authority, hailed the judgment as a “resounding victory for the City, Capetonians and residents of the Western Cape”.

The judgment by the highest court in the land puts the five-year legal tug-of-war to bed. Sanral had applied for leave to appeal against the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Winelands tolling case late last year.

Herron said: “Sanral has now reached the end of the road. (The agency) 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.”

This, he said, meant that should the road agency still have any plan of tolling the freeways, it would have to start the process from scratch. Moreover, Sanral had been ordered to pay the City’s legal costs, which, on September 20, stood at R20 653 756, Herron said yesterday.

This did not include recent litigation in the Constitutional Court and also excluded the road agency’s legal costs, he said.

A full bench of the Supreme Court of Appeal unanimously ruled in the City’s favour in September. The court had declared Sanral’s decision to toll sections of the N1 and N2 freeways as invalid.

Herron said the City had pleaded with Sanral not to waste taxpayers’ money on further legal action.

Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona said the road agency had noted the judgment and would abide by it.

He said talks between the City and Sanral had started shortly before yesterday’s court proceedings. Mona would not say whether the road agency had approached the City.

“We’re closer to finding one another on a win-win solution for all parties, especially road users,” he told Weekend Argus last night. Mona said the purpose of the tolling had been to de-congest the city.

He explained Sanral couldn’t get an allocation from Treasury to build more roads, which is why they proposed tolling.