Cape Town not happy with tolls
The City of Cape Town has declared a dispute with the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) over the tolling of “important” roads in the city.
The city said in a statement on Tuesday that a formal letter had been written to Transport Minister Sbu Ndebele to inform him that an intergovernmental dispute had been declared with Sanral over its plans to toll the N1 and N2 between the city and the Cape winelands.
“The city is opposed to these plans and has declared the dispute in terms of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework, Act 13 of 2005 as it believes that both the Environmental Impact Assessment and Intent to Toll processes were flawed and that Sanral has not addressed the City’s concerns,” the statement said.
The city said the socio-economic impacts of tolling had not been adequately assessed and were not considered by the Minister of Environmental Affairs when he granted an environmental authorisation for the tolling of the N1 and N2.
The “broad impact” on the metropolitan road network had not been assessed and viable alternatives to tolling had not been considered.
The tolling on the N1 and N2 is likely to divert traffic onto municipal roads which will impact on the capacity, operation and maintenance required on these roads.
This will stretch the city’s limited budget for road maintenance and construction as Sanral has not committed any funding to cover the increased maintenance costs, the city said.
“The city’s policy on the provision of road tolls indicates that tolling should not be used as a means of funding road construction and maintenance within the city’s boundaries because it is not cost effective and is inequitable,” the statement said.
Mayoral committee member for transport, roads and stormwater, Brett Herron, said the city had been left with little choice but to declare an official dispute, as all repeated attempts to engage Sanral regarding this matter had failed.
“As the authority that will be directly impacted by this proposed tolling, the city commented extensively during all the phases of both the Environmental Impact Assessment and Intent to Toll public participation process and engaged with Sanral at various intergovernmental meetings held during 2010 to raise our concerns,” he said.
“We also tried to engage them on a number of occasions this year in attempts to resolve our dispute. Sanral refused to discuss the city’s concerns and indicated that they are only willing to explain their policies and strategies.
“Our letter to the minister is our last attempt at resolving this dispute before taking legal action.”
Sanral was not immediately available for comment.
Vjaay
Cape Town must also come to the party, angesife sodwa la e Jozi, i hate this TOLL thingReport Abuse
Lilywhite
Go for it DA the tolls are a rip off and very little of the money will go to maintaining the roads. You only need to look at all the other projects where money has disappeared into greedy officials pockets.Report Abuse
Fred55
Well done Cape Town, well done DA, the tolls are a rip off designed to make fat cat politicians rich!!Report Abuse
Akhonto
i hate these toll gates esp now that i kno if we have billions to borrow Mswati why did they not take that money nd pay th company that installed these stupid toll gates...but then again do their ever listen to our voices NO....yerrReport Abuse
LBS
@Akhontoi hate these toll gates esp now that i kno if we have billions to borrow Mswati why did they not take that money nd pay th company that installed these stupid toll gates...but then again do their ever listen to our voices NO....yerr
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Well done to Cape Town and the DA who work FOR the people instead of against them at every opportunity.
We have billions to 'lend' to despots like Mswati but not enough for ourselves.
In a democracy the government works for the people but not in Africa and certainly not in SA!!
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