Ethekwini rejects idea of tolls

Although road users in Johannesburg could be in for a municipal highways toll-shock, the country’s other main municipalities are not even vaguely considering such a money-making scheme for road maintenance. The issue was born when the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) said that it “was in active discussions” with the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) about the possibility of tolling the M1 and M2 highways in the city. Speaking at the Africa Roads conference in Johannesburg recently, JRA MD Duduzile Maseko said the city had a maintenance backlog of about R1.5 billion and needed additional revenue to tackle the problem. “We are now considering borrowing the R1.5bn to deal with the problem,” she said, and suggested that tolling the two highways could be considered as an option to repay such a loan. But such a scheme is certainly not on the minds of the Ethekwini Transport Authority (ETA) for the Durban municipal highways (M3, M2 and M4), according to ETA executive, Logan Moodley. “From the municipal perspective,” he told FTW, “the city council is dead-set against the Sanral toll idea. “Indeed, as far back as 2002 they came out with a policy that was utterly against tolls on these highways, and even suggested that they were not going to support Sanral in the tolling of their national highways within the municipal area.” An example of this, he noted, was at the Prospecton interchange, a tolling idea that Sanral has been avidly pursuing for some time. Cape Town seems equally lacking in favour of tolling municipal road sections, according to Seaboard executive, Mike Walwyn, chairman of the Cape Town port liaison forum, and a keen observer of all levels of government matters. “There have been some mutterings about the tolling issue,” he said. “But the main topic has been the proposed tolls for the N1 and N2 – on the Somerset West stretch of the N2 and to Paarl on the N1. “But these are national (Sanral) sections of road, and there has been no talk of raising maintenance/repair funds by tolls on the municipal stretches.”