Sanral tries to find the balance

the road maintenance levy in the fuel price would have to be increased by r1.60 a litre if it was to be used to pay for the gauteng freeway improvement project (gfip), sa national roads agency limited (sanral) chief executive nazir alli said on friday.

but that would mean motorists outside gauteng who did not receive any benefit from the project would also have to pay for it, alli added at the transunion auto trends forum.

alli admitted an increase in the fuel levy could be implemented only in gauteng but this still meant making someone, for instance living in bronkhorstspruit, pay for a service they did not receive.

“equity is an important thing. that is the balance we are trying to find. why make somebody pay for something they don’t use?” he said.

alli said the increase in the fuel levy would be r1.60 a litre when the proposed toll tariff before discounts was 66c a kilometre because the amount that could be raised from the fuel levy was linked to fuel sales.
he said the gfip cost r20 billion and r28bn was raised by the fiscus last year from fuel levies.

alli said if sanral’s total budget for non-toll roads was spent on the 185km comprising the gfip, there would not be anything left for the rest of the 16 000km of roads in the network.

the consequences of that would be a deterioration in these roads, he said, adding that “this is the balance you have got to find”.

alli countered suggestions that the billions of rands being spent on the electronic tolling technology, construction of the toll gantries and administration costs associated with the collection of the toll fees could have been better spent on paying for the cost of building the roads, and that the fuel levy was a more efficient and cost effective method of paying for the gfip, by questioning how many jobs would have been created if this had been done.

he said that a council for scientific and industrial research report indicated that the gfip would have a positive macroeconomic impact through reduced overall transport costs and should contribute r9bn to gross domestic product in rand terms and create 40 000 jobs.

he said the potential loss in value added in gauteng alone could amount to r155bn between 2004 and 2025 and based on conservative assumptions, the cost of congestion on the ben schoeman highway amounted to r15 million an hour. aaconducted tests concluded that congestion resulted in 122 minutes of extra driving a day, which amounted to one entire week in a month, he said.