SA's 'road of death' to be upgraded

Published Apr 13, 2015

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Pretoria - R34.5 billion. That is what it will take to tame the killer road that is Moloto.

Early government estimates show that R20 billiion will go towards a rapid rail service, R10 billiion on rail stock and another R1.8 billion to improve the condition of the road that has claimed so many lives. A further R2.7 billion will go towards upgrading several feeder roads along Moloto Road.

The department of transport and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa say plans for the Moloto Road corridor upgrade are on track and they are working with the National Treasury to make the project a success.

At a community imbizo in Kwaggafontein along the R573 on Sunday, transport minister Dipuo Peters said her department handed over the rail project to Prasa in October.

“Prasa has started engaging with the National Treasury and I am happy to indicate to you that minister of finance Nhlanhla Nene has received a presentation by Prasa and will be engaging with us to make it possible that when we arrive at the final costing of the project we are within the limits that the government can afford.”

The project had been registered as a public-private partnership, she said, so they had to start looking for partners in the private sector that would help fund it.

The department started the project to upgrade the road because of the high number of deadly accidents on the road.

Prasa spokesman Moffat Mofokeng confirmed the agency has already started negotiations with the National Treasury for the 124km rail line between Pretoria and the places along Moloto Road.

Once the Treasury approved Prasa’s plans, it would start the process of acquiring land, carrying out an environmental impact assessment and stakeholder engagements before commencing with the project, he said.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

“Railways by their very nature take long. The infrastructure takes long to put in place and… in this area we are starting from scratch. Once approvals are given we are ready to do the work,” Mofokeng said. It was difficult to say when the building of the rail tracks would start, he said.

The minister said: “We have to speak to municipalities and provinces to make this project a success. We cannot just build stations. They have to tell us where their economic nodal points are… We are building Ekangala anew.”

The Moloto Rail Development Corridor has been a long time in the making, starting in 2004 when the government of Mpumalanga launched a process to improve public transport offered to commuters who travel to Pretoria daily.

A feasibility study was conducted in 2006 and 2007, which concluded that the project was feasible.

Peters said so far they had already received R1.1 billion for an upgrade of the R573.

“I have in writing informed the premiers of Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga that it will be part of a network of roads under Sanral that is not tolled,” Peters said.

The most important thing about making the R573 a national road was trying to curb road deaths, she said.

“The intervention is to ensure that the road is usable and accommodates the volumes of traffic. We also have to look at ways of keeping pedestrians away from the road. Right now there are a lot of pedestrian accidents,” Peters said.

The road’s traffic volumes were nearly equal to those on national roads such as the N1, she added.

Thousands of commuters from Mpumalanga and Limpopo use the road every day to travel to work in Pretoria, while bus company Putco carries at least 340 000 people a day between Gauteng and Mpumalanga.

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