“Many road users have been confused about the process, and others had their invoices delayed in a postal strike, so we have extended an offer of the discounted standard rate for the first three months’ charges,” explained SANRAL’s Vusi Mona recently, as if “confusion” and the “postal strike” were the only reasons why some 1,5 million freeway users had not bought e-tags.

It’s difficult to fathom how, after a multi-million rand marketing campaign, there could be a soul with a driver’s licence, from Messina to Malmesbury, who was unaware of the e-toll system and it workings, unless of course this is a case of ‘no amount of advertising could begin to explain the inexplicable’. Methinks the latter applies, but as far as the postal strike goes, could it be that the Communication Workers Union’s instruction to members to deliberately go slow on processing e-toll bills had its desired impact? SANRAL may never realise their woes won’t be solved by superficial measures and offers of discounts.

The SANRAL board, their executives and the transport authorities must confront self-deception and denialism if we are to get out of the trouble we are in over e-tolling. As Mark Twain said, “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” The simple truth is that unpaid e-toll bills exist for two reasons: the first being the few hundreds of thousands that refuse to play SANRAL’s new one sided ‘e-stole’ game and secondly, the remaining hundreds of thousands who, even if they wanted to throw money into the SANRAL party pot, have no idea how much to toss their way, as they have yet to receive a bill.

In an interview with 702’s Steven Grootes on Friday 15 May, Mr Mona stated: “We are collecting [our e-toll revenues] and are ahead of our projections… We have over 700,000 people that are paying on a monthly basis and from that we are ahead of our projections.” Strangely, just a few weeks ago SANRAL claimed their e-tag user number was at around the one million mark. Confusing, but nonetheless, either way this remains an extremely low uptake for a ‘user pays’ system when there is an average of 2,5 million Gauteng freeway users every month. More concerning is that fact that SANRAL’s court affidavits in April 2012 spoke of a very achievable compliance level of around 93%, as they confidently argued their plan to launch the world’s most ambitious e-toll plan in Gauteng. Never mind that only 15% of Gauteng road users pay their traffic fines, or that a high number of number plates are false, or that the e-Natis system is fraught with a high level of erroneous information. Throw into that mix an untrusting and angry citizenry, and what, pray tell, is unclear about the closing scene of this thickened plot?

OUTA estimates that less than R100m of the initially planned e-toll monthly income of R260m is currently being generated. The collected revenues, however, are roughly just enough to simply pay for the collection system – based on the tender awarded to ETC – with very little going into the tarmac. How on earth can this situation be construed as being in line with targets? What targets? Could it be revised targets, with the heading: “Let’s just pay for the collection process right now and we’ll worry about the freeway bonds later?” #PleasePassMeThatStuffYou’reSmoking.

Earlier this month, SANRAL announced another annual CPI increase to all other tolled routes, barring the two contentious projects of Swartruggens and GFIP e-tolls, implying they were doing the public a favour and got away with virtually no public outcry. Not even a whimper from the large transport and logistics companies. Yet SANRAL’s continual annual inflationary increases have pushed the cost of transport along most long distance tolled routes well beyond where they ought to be. The negative impact of these high toll plaza fees has effectively diverted thousands of trucks off the freeways each month, through the rural towns and unsuitable dangerous passes, causing death and destruction along these alternative routes, with some of them reduced to a state of impassibility. Shockingly, the governing authorities approved SANRAL’s suggested changes to the regulations some years ago, which set out to negate their prior need to keep the alternative roads maintained, thereby holding many road users captive to the expensive tolled routes.

In addition to the amended regulations on alternative route maintenance, SANRAL also ensured they need not ring-fence the toll revenues of each route to the specific road on which the tolls were collected. Today, the capital and finance costs of almost all our tolled rural freeways have long since been paid up, requiring minimal toll fees for the maintenance thereof. Yet these rural toll tariffs have never declined and instead, they continue to climb year after year, with the toll plaza revenues disbursed to other projects and with it, they toss their ‘user pays’ mantra straight out the window.

Then there is the burning question itching to be asked by the Road Freight Association (RFA), relating to the absence of the Independent Transport Regulator, as was offered by SANRAL, along with other conditions when a deal was struck with the RFA to retract their objections to the e-toll system in 2012. The silence is deafening.

The extent of the secrecy, along with the numbers that don’t add up and the lack of transparency, has moved SANRAL from having scripted a farce, to now directing a fiasco. The producer of the tragicomedy is, of course, a government that has become so high on its own juice in presuming that just because it has electoral support, it can pass laws without engaging the ‘users’ of the user pay system in a transparent and meaningful consultation processes. DM