Having completed ‘detailed designs’ for the K148/N3 interchange – an important road link to the Tambo Springs Freight and Logistics Hub – construction is set to begin in the third quarter of the current financial year. This was announced last week by Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport, Jacob Mamabolo, in his Budget Vote to the Gauteng Legislature, where he noted that his department “continues to lead in the establishment of the hub, a National Development Plan strategic infrastructure initiative”. He pointed out that the new interchange would relieve a lot of congestion on this major artery and therefore make the movement of people and goods much easier. “The R6.5 billion that the Gauteng provincial government will be investing in building connecting roads that support the Tambo Springs freight hub is a vote of confidence in the project and the people of Ekurhuleni,” Mamabolo said. The hub is part of a broader drive by several government partners – including Transnet – to move rail-friendly cargo from road to rail. In June this year, the Southern Palace Joint Venture Consortium was awarded a concession by Transnet for the design, financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the intermodal container terminal forming part of the Tambo Springs Logistics Gateway development. “The planned Tambo Springs Intermodal Terminal will be developed as part of a next-generation Logistics Gateway, combining direct terminal handling facilities as well as back-of-terminal property development and related value-add logistics services and activities,” Transnet spokesperson Molatwane Likhethe highlighted at the time. As South Africa’s economic hub, Gauteng handles approximately 60% of the country’s import and export goods. “A development of this magnitude will ease road traffic by diverting road cargo to rail networks linked to the country’s sea ports,” Likhethe added. He pointed out that container movement to and from Gauteng was expected to grow to four million twentyfoot equivalent units (TEUs) per annum by 2021. “The new terminal will ease the strain on the existing inland container terminal, City Deep, and will ensure that the current and future container volume traffic is efficiently and appropriately serviced by rail, thus alleviating the existing and projected pressure on the N3 road infrastructure.” “The Tambo Springs inland terminal has been on the government’s plans for a number of years now. Once completed, the inland terminal will completely change the face of Gauteng,” added Transnet chief business development officer, Gert De Beer. But not everyone is convinced of the viability of the roads linking the hub. Francois Nortje of NT55 Investments has for years been raising objections to the development of the connecting roads linking Tambo Springs to the N3, highlighting to FTW as far back as 2016 that the areas for the roads developments were situated in a flood line and a wetlands conservation area – which would make building these linkages extremely costly. Nortje, through his attorneys, has taken legal action to review the viability of the road linkages. Following Transnet’s announcement, NT55’s legal representatives, WP Steyn, sent a letter to the parastatal cautioning that it would launch an urgent interdict should construction of the interchange start before its own legal review of the Gauteng government’s decision to realign the proposed road linkages.
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A development of this magnitude will ease road traffic by diverting road cargo to rail networks linked to the country’s sea ports. – Molatwane Likhethe
