Zambian toll fees to fund road upgrades

Zambia will rely on additional toll fees from heavy-haul vehicles to fund its aggressive road sector development programme which, amongst others, will see a total of 10 400 kilometres of road being upgraded. “The Zambian government recognises that good transport infrastructure is crucial to regional economic integration and is investing in several surface transport development initiatives,” said Yamfwa Mukanga, Zambian Minister of Public Works and Transport, in Johannesburg recently. The minister noted that the projects would be funded by the Zambian Road Development Agency and that toll gates at weighbridges would be a major additional source of funding for the projects. Mukanga said that seven toll gates had been erected at weighbridges throughout the country and tolls had been claimed from trucks during the first six months of 2014 as part of a pilot project to test the feasibility of raising funds using this method. “We raised just over US$30 million during this period and have definitely seen the potential,” he said. As a result, the government will be rolling this out to other national roads, said Mukanga, noting that actual toll gates would be erected instead of using weighbridges to ensure all vehicles are tolled. The road upgrades include the Link Zambia 8000 project, an initiative to upgrade and develop roads linking all the provinces with each other; the L400 campaign which will see the upgrade and rehabilitation of roads in the capital city; and the Pave 2000 programme which aims to pave 2 000 kilometres of urban and township roads countrywide using concrete paving blocks. Makunga said the government was also investing in several new onestop- border-posts (OSBPs) and the construction of bridges. CAPTION A construction crew works on the L400 road upgrade campaign in the Zambian capital city of Lusaka.