Drop in toll road projects ‘a victory for citizens’

Toll-funded road projects were slowing down for want of clarity on toll policy, the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) said on Tuesday.

This was immediately rejected as disingenuous by lobby group Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).

“Road infrastructure and maintenance is the job of government, national, provincial and local, ” said Outa chairman Wayne Duvenage.

Tolling was one way of funding infrastructure development, he said. “The problem is that these roads are generally paid up and the toll gates continue to charge increased tariffs, even though the only cost required is maintenance, once the capital cost is settled.”

Sanral’s e-toll scheme had failed and had to be reviewed, he said. In the past, SA paid for this through the fuel levy. “But now Sanral says that until the citizens agree to pay e-tolls, we can’t build new roads. This is nonsense. The fuel levy alone provided the government with R65bn a year, which is not the amount given to Sanral (R15bn) or the provinces combined.”

The policy uncertainty has arisen from civil disobedience in reaction to e-tolling in Gauteng. The e-toll project is about R9.5bn shy of its projected earnings. Sanral had envisaged an e-toll income of about R300m a month, but with about 80% of the 1.2-million Gauteng freeway users not paying their bills, that had fallen to R70m.

That Sanral had put new toll road projects on hold was tantamount to an admission of failure, said Howard Dembovsky, chairman of Justice Project SA. “It is a victory for citizens.”

Khanyisa Ngewu, Sanral’s divisional head for the public sector, said non-toll roads were funded by the National Treasury and would continue as planned in the medium-term expenditure framework.