Johannesburg - By closing down 12 e-toll kiosks, the South African National Roads Agency Limited is preparing for the possibility that the system is in its final days, says the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance.
The Electronic Tolling Company has disclosed that while there were still 35 active sites, it has closed down several temporary kiosks over the past six months.
However, Outa chairman Wayne Duvenage said the closures marked the beginning of the end for the controversial system.
“Yes, we do think the ongoing kiosks closures are a sign of the end,” he said. “It has been going on for a few months now and goes hand-in-hand with declining compliance levels.”
ETC has yet to confirm which kiosks were still operational but there were several temporary outlets in shopping malls for the initial registration phase, where drivers could register e-tags or pay e-toll bills.
Chief executive of collections Jamie Surkont said service delivery would not be impacted by the closure of the kiosks. The closures were part of the operational planning of the project and were always envisaged as part of the evolution of the project, he said, hence the designation “temporary kiosks” right from the start.
At least 38 employees were affected directly by the closure, but Surkont said staff working at the kiosks were not employed by the company.
The affected workers were contracted by a temporary labour provider due to the nature of their assignment.
However, all have been converted to full-time employees of the ETC, and as such, there were no job losses.
“It must also be noted that during this process there were a few resignations, which formed part of normal operational attrition,” he added.
CIVIL ACTION
However, Duvenage said civil action taken by the vast majority of road users had given rise to the demise of the scheme; Outa estimated that fewer than 30 percent of cars using the e-tolled highways were tagged and paying to use the roads.
“In 2012, Sanral indicated that a compliance level of 93 percent was achievable, yet a year after the system went live, they are at a third of that level,” Duvenage said.
“We trust that early in 2015 we will see sanity prevail on this matter as the current situation surely cannot continue. It appears that the majority of people paying are corporate and government fleets.”
Driving skills specialist and road safety consultant Rob Handfield-Jones said Sanral presumed that six to nine months after the launch it would have sold 1.6 to 1.9 million e-tags - and “we would all be compliant little sheep”.
Despite delaying the closures until a year after the launch, the tag numbers were not anywhere near these predictions, he said, and it thus became pointless to keep the kiosks open.
“In fact, Sanral still refuses to say exactly how many tags have been sold, because it would be an embarrassment to its authoritarian campaign of threats and harassment,” he added.
“The kiosks are not being closed because Sanral and ETC met their objectives; they are being closed because they have failed.”
Pretoria News