Cape tolling case ‘trial of the century’

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File photo

Published Aug 11, 2015

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Cape Town - The Western Cape High Court will begin a review, at the behest of the City of Cape Town, of the South African National Roads Agency Limited’s proposed tolling of the N1 and N2 on Tuesday.

The City of Cape Town’s mayco member for Transport, Brett Herron, said the application could be regarded as “the trial of the century” as the outcome would have far-reaching consequences for the city’s future.

“The application has been set down for argument over a number of days and is the culmination of a commitment by this government to do whatever it takes to prevent Sanral from imposing an unjust, unwarranted and devastating tolling decision on our city,” he said.

In April, Sanral dismissed as grossly misleading allegations that it would implement the same e-tolling system in Cape Town as it has in Gauteng.

Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona said: “First, whereas in Gauteng we went out to borrow money in order to build the road, with Cape Town we will be appointing a concessionaire on a Build, Operate and Transfer basis. This means the concessionaire will finance and maintain the road, returning it to the state in a specified condition after the concession period.”

On Monday, before the court review, Mona said: “Unlike the City of Cape Town, Sanral will not resort to dramatic statements like ‘tolling trial of the century’. We are going into this trial knowing that this is not the ‘be all and end all’ of tolling and that demonising Sanral, which has a legitimate mandate from government in the roll-out of a viable national road network, will not work. We will wait for the outcome of the court hearing and take it from there.”

Herron said Sanral’s actions were inconsistent with the constitution and the principles of transparency and collaboration.

“Since we took the decision to declare an intergovernmental dispute with Sanral and the national ministers of Transport and Environmental Affairs, we have witnessed and experienced unprecedented efforts by Sanral to conceal the truth from a democratically elected government and the people we elected to serve,” he said.

“It required extraordinary efforts on our part, including an application to the Supreme Court of Appeal, to get to the truth of this proposed tolling project, and to be able to share that truth with the residents of Cape Town.”

Herron said Sanral was determined to withhold facts, such as the real costs of the tolling of the N1 and N2; the proposed toll fees to be paid by motorists; and the terms of the proposed agreement with the preferred bidder, Protea Parkways Consortium. “The application for secrecy that Sanral and the consortium brought to the court would have had far reaching implications for our rights to access to information and media freedom if we had left it unchallenged,” he said.

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Cape Argus

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