South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) has announced that it was halting the construction of Gauteng’s freeways with more electronic tolls due to funding issues.
The move comes despite the implementation of a new tariff regime meant to offer certainty to the construction project.
According to a report released by the Agency (Sanral), the new phases of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) will be on hold until they finalize on the funding model.
According to Sanral’s GM for Communications, Vusi Mona, the reduced e-toll tariffs had increased attraction to the upgraded freeways thus new freeways had to be constructed as soon as possible.
However, the second and third phases of this construction project could not be worked on until they had come up with a funding model.
Agreement by motorist on the use of e-tolls had improved since the new dispensation and had increase between 30 and 40 percent. However, this was not at the level that they had seen before July 2014 when the Premier for Gauteng set up a panel to review the socioeconomic effects of e-tolls.
Projects on the roads with e-tolls showed that congestion was still the same to previous years till 2017 to 2018. Reduction in the toll fee and seen an increase in use of the upgraded roads thus making it necessary to toll other highways.
The South African National Roads Agency Limited, generally known as SANRAL, is an independent, statutory company registered in terms of the Companies Act. The South African government, represented by the Minister of Transport, is the sole shareholder and owner of SANRAL.
