Roads delay has ‘major implications’ for Gauteng
THE “significant delay” in the implementation of the second and third phases of the stalled and contentious Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project had “major implications” for the province as these roads provided the backbone for the province’s mobility.
This stark reminder is contained in the Gauteng Transport Implementation Plan, which is a new five-year blueprint drafted by a team of transport and urban planning experts on behalf of the Gauteng provincial roads and transport department.
The draft shows that e-tolling, conditional grants and concessions are all being explored as possible sources of funding for the construction and maintenance of new and existing roads. Implementation of tolling on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project has been postponed four times since construction work on the first phase of the programme was completed last year.
The project was greeted with public outrage.
Gautrain CEO Jack van der Merwe, chairing a committee of transport and urban planning experts commissioned by the province to create a 25-year Integrated Transport Master Plan, said the unpopular e-tolling option was “not a holy cow”.
“There is no magic to (road) funding; it must either come directly from the fiscus or indirectly through the user-pays (principle),” Mr van der Merwe said.
Gauteng transport MEC Ismail Vadi said that over the next 25 years it was expected that Gauteng’s population of 11-million would grow by a further 16million people.
This growth needed to be planned and the solution to the province’s problems lay in the overhaul of transport systems, with a special emphasis on public transport services and planning, Mr Vadi said.
In April the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance won a high court interdict preventing the introduction of tolling and paving the way for a review of the processes followed by the South African National Roads Agency in the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project.
The legal battle over tolling goes to the Constitutional Court this month, with the Treasury challenging the high court’s au- thority to intervene in the policy decisions of the state.
According to the Gauteng plan, 80% of the province’s roads had a pavement structure older than 20 years, usually considered the design life of a pavement. That means 3,100km of roads in the province has already reached the end of their design life.
To maintain and preserve the road network, 100km to 200km should be “reconstructed or rehabilitated” each year, the plan said. “Since 1990, the rate of repair or rehabilitation has decreased markedly, averaging only 22km per year.”
The roads covered by the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, but which have since been abandoned, were all “highlighted in the various planning documents as priority routes and were vital for the further development of the Gauteng Province,” the document said.
The plan identified 11 priority programmes that could be fasttracked in the short term to provide momentum to existing plans and programmes that span the Gauteng city region, which consists of the three metropolitan municipalities in the province.
The Integrated Transport Master Plan replaces the previous 30-year plan drafted in 1970 and which had expired in December 2010, Mr Vadi said.
Costing for the 11 projects has not been done yet, Mr van der Merwe said.
Each of the 11 plans still needed implementation plans with information on the financial and skills needs, he said.