"Why user-pay system trumps fuel levy argument'

The fuel levy is not the silver bullet many believe it to be when it comes to paying for road infrastructure, said Imperial Logistics chief integration officer, Cobus Rossouw. While controversial, he said, Imperial Logistics supports the user-pay system because it believes this is the most effective way to create transport infrastructure. “We use the infrastructure every day and we need the government to create capacity and invest in the infrastructure, so we would rather pay for what we use,” he said. “The fuel levy cannot practically be the answer to fund new infrastructure because it does not shape specific behaviour and more fundamentally, there is no control over where the money is going to be spent. We would be lucky to see it go into transport infrastructure.” “In terms of behaviour everything we do in supply chain logistics management is about trade-offs – be it bigger trucks and more economic loads, or smaller trucks and smaller deliveries. It is all a trade-off between cost and risk.” He said to apply these trade-offs was the only way to ultimately shape behaviour. “We understand that we need an intermodal shift and that some cargo belongs on rail, but unless we push people to change their behaviour we will not see the changes we require.” Acknowledging the court case brought against the South African National Road Agency Ltd (Sanral) by the Opposition Against Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) that will see the entire process of e-tolling in Gauteng reviewed, including the method of tariff collection, Rossouw said it was important to remove the emotion from the debate. “Ultimately the lawyers are going to decide what to do. That is like asking an accountant to prescribe your heart medication and not your cardiologist. This is not about if e-tolling is the right thing, but if we do not have the user-pays system we will end up in exactly the same position in terms of congestion and road user behaviour,” he said.