Sanral continues to mislead – Outa
JOBURG - Outa refuted Sanral's claims that they were ready to start e-tolling two years ago, which were made at the Sanral media roundtable yesterday.
“If Sanral were so efficient, and their funding predicament was so serious, why are we still seeing a flurry of legislative amendments taking place over the past year? We recall that Sanral argued in the Constitutional Court in August 2012 they could – and would – launch e-tolls within two weeks of the interdict being set aside. Almost a year has passed, and they are still beating around the bush,” said Outa chairperson, Wayne Duvenage.
Outa is also of the opinion that Sanral has a significant problem with e-toll payment enforcement, which is critical to the success of their plan.
“They have yet to publish the step-by-step enforcement process, and we believe that they have not figured out the details themselves, hoping that if and when they launch, they can intimidate or coerce enough people to buy into their e-tag plan – before they have to implement court proceedings.”
Outa also stated that a collection cost of compliant users, at 17%, is out of line with international benchmarks. Also, the cost impact of non-compliant road users in their total cost of collection, wherein they assume these will be recovered by the higher rates applied to those who don’t pay, has been omitted.
Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona stated in a press release that “if you are one of those paying the maximum amount [R450 cap], you will have travelled through 301 gantries and done an average of 2 760km during the month on the e-tolled roads. That is, of course, if you are fitted with an e-tag and have an up-to-date registered account”.
According to Duvenage, when using Sanral’s own e-toll calculator on their website, and taking an average of three different commuter routes at e-tag rates during standard commuter times, they were able to rack up far less kilometres through almost half the number of gantries to reach the R450 cap at an average of 28c / km.
“Once again, the public receive false and misleading information from Sanral, and are then expected to believe their average spend data and statistics,” he said.
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