An advisory panel report on the socio-economic impact of the e-tolls in Gauteng has recommended that elements of the current e-toll system must be reviewed to address issues such as affordability.

“The main recommendation of the panel is that elements of the current e-toll system must be reviewed to address the questions of affordability, equity, fairness, administrative simplicity and sustainability,” says Premier David Makhura during the release of the report on Thursday.

The panel has made more than 50 recommendations that address the socio-economic impact of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) and e-tolls, including issues of public transport infrastructure, environmental sustainability and spatial integration of the province.

Makhura says: “While there is general acceptance of the user pay principle and willingness to pay for current and future upgrades of roads and public transport infrastructure in its current form, the e-toll system is unaffordable and inequitable and places a disproportionate burden on low and middle income households.

“It is also administratively too cumbersome.”

He adds that the provincial government is working with national government and the three metropolitan municipalities of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg to consider all the recommendations and their full implications.
The premier also announced that he will convene a consultative session with all the stakeholders that made submissions to consider all the recommendations and their full implications, including the best funding model.

Meanwhile the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has expressed its disappointment in yesterday’s announcement, which it had hoped would have called for a complete scrapping of e-tolls.

In a statement, Cosatu comments: “Despite conceding that ‘the e-toll system in its current form is unaffordable and inequitable and places a disproportionate burden on low and middle income households and is also administratively cumbersome’, the panel shies away from the obvious conclusion from this – that the system, which has been overwhelmingly rejected by the people of Gauteng, should be abandoned.

“It merely argues that ‘elements of the current e-toll system must be reviewed to address the questions of affordability, equity, fairness, administrative simplicity and sustainability’, without admitting that it is the whole system which is unaffordable, inequitable, unfair and unsustainable.

“The most shocking comment by the panel is its assertion that ‘there is general acceptance of the user-pay principle’, when the evidence is overwhelming that the majority of Gauteng residents reject this view.

“While all motorists accept that road improvements need to be paid for, the overwhelming view is that roads are a vital public service – just like education and healthcare – and should therefore be funded by society as a whole through progressive taxation. They are not commodities just for people who can afford to pay for them, especially as they have already been paying for these services already through their taxes. The big majority of those who drive on the tolled roads do so not through choice but because they have no alternative way of making vital journeys, particularly to and from work.”

Cosatu adds that it welcomes the premier’s decision to convene a meeting of stakeholders in February and will “use this forum to argue strongly for the government to accept the inevitable logic of the panel’s report, which is that e-tolls have been a disaster – deeply unpopular and unsustainable – which will inevitably have to be replaced and the sooner the better”.