Heavy vehicle user-pay principle on the cards

The reviewed national road freight strategy must address four key issues if it wants to have an impact on the movement of freight in the country. It must look at the excess of freight on the roads, the poor road conditions, overloading as well as ineffective law enforcement and slow regional integration. Speaking at the annual Road Freight Association conference in Botswana recently, directorgeneral for the department of Transport, George Mahlalela, said the strategy was being reviewed as it had been lacking in various aspects. “We have also established a technical body to coordinate, evaluate and approve transport plans and investment in an effort to ensure balanced transport infrastructure spending across the various modes of transport. This is done by taking into account the national interests and interventions needed,” said Mahlalela. Called the national transport-planning forum, the committee is tasked with aligning the DoT’s mandate. “We have to address the fact that there is too much freight on our roads. There must be a greater commitment from everyone, not just government, to move freight from road to rail. It is also important to align Transnet’s mandate with the goal of the country and enable the shift from road to rail.” He said the second thrust of the strategy was to address road infrastructure. “By establishing a road maintenance fund dedicated to road infrastructure and maintenance we can start a process of addressing the maintenance backlog. We are also looking at introducing a heavy vehicle user-pay principle where all funds go to the road maintenance fund and are collected by Sars.” He said overloading was tackled quite intensively in the strategy and the DoT was looking at implementing an integrated and empowered overload control system to address the issue of overloading and lack of law enforcement in the country.