Durban - After 13 years of controversy, the N2 Wild Coast toll-road saga has taken another surprise turn – with reports that no new toll plazas will be built in Durban or anywhere else in KwaZulu-Natal, in order to finance the proposed R4 billion project.
Provincial Transport MEC Willies Mchunu announced on Tuesday that Sanral had agreed to scrap the proposed toll gate at Isipingo, south of Durban, and that no toll gates would be built anywhere else on the South Coast to pay for a new highway along the scenic Wild Coast region of the Eastern Cape.
Quoting Mxolisi Kaunda, the KZN provincial transport portfolio committee chairman, Mchunu said this decision had been taken in Cape Town recently at a strategy meeting of transport ministers and the national roads agency, Sanral.
But Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona said that no such undertaking had been given and that a final decision on how to fund the proposed highway/toll road would have to be taken by the presidential infrastructure co-ordinating commission.
Mona said the agency was ready to go ahead with construction on the Eastern Cape side of the border, but was still trying to “reach common ground” with the KZN provincial government.
“We have not given any assurance that there won’t be any tolling on the KZN side,” he said.
Asked what proposals had been made to the commission by Sanral, Mona said he did not wish to “pre-empt decisions by the commission”.
National Transport Ministry spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso declined to be drawn on the Wild Coast highway funding issue when approached for clarity last night.
Rikhotso said there was already a R150bn shortfall for road infrastructure projects nationwide, but he was not aware of any decision to scrap tollgates along the KZN section.
“The big question we have to ask ourselves is how we fund much-needed development – be it roads, electricity, communications or any other big infrastructure projects. There needs to be a sustainable solution… and I am sure that this is at the top of the minds of the leadership,” said Rikhotso.
Nevertheless, the roads agency has been working quietly behind the scenes for the past few years to overcome a series of obstacles hindering its vision of building a new highway through the Pondoland Wild Coast.
Over the past few months, Sanral has also met traditional leaders and other decision-makers in the Pondoland region to defuse opposition to the project.
Earlier this week, Sanral said there had been a “groundbreaking decision” over the past few days after “the Pondo people and their traditional leaders” agreed to support the Wild Coast highway project.
“Now that we have buy-in from the community, thanks to the vision of Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti and the Pondo kings and chiefs, we can move forward with this project, which will add to our already world-class national road network,” Mona said.
On Tuesday he backtracked, saying that there were still a number of court cases pending and Sanral would have to wait for the outcome of these cases before making further announcements.
Mona’s statement also appeared to come as a surprise to KZN Premier Zweli Mkhize, who told The Mercury that he would ask for clarity from Sanral, the Eastern Cape government and the National Department of Transport about the latest developments with the Wild Coast project. His spokesman, Ndabe Sibiya, said the provincial government remained opposed to the Wild Coast road if Sanral depended on subsidising the route by charging tolls in KZN.
The financial feasibility of the original Sanral proposal, first mooted in 2000, appears to depend largely on KZN motorists picking up the lion’s share of the massive construction costs.
Although the proposed Durban-to-East London toll route is 580km long, only 80km of it involves new road construction. The remainder of the route is an existing national road.
A study by Imani transport consultants in 2009 suggested that 31 percent of the total toll revenue would be plucked from the pockets of the 55 000 vehicle drivers who used the Isipingo section of N2 route daily.
The South Durban business coalition (which included Toyota SA, Illovo Sugar, Umbogintwini Industrial Association and the Southgate Industrial Park) estimated at the time that a tollgate at Isipingo would reduce their turnover by about 2 percent by pushing up the cost of doing business by as much as R81 million a year.
Although Sanral has steadfastly refused to debate toll-fee levels as part of the environmental impact assessment process, Sanral officials indicated in 2007 that toll fees along the Durban-East London route could be set somewhere between R320 and R120.
In the Eastern Cape, at least five local communities also mounted high court action against the project, arguing that they had not been consulted properly about the social and economic impact.
This high court case, along with a separate case by several companies in South Durban, is still pending – although the Department of Environmental Affairs approved the project in 2010 and subsequently dismissed appeals by more than 50 groups and individual objectors.
The Mercury