Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance on Wednesday called on Gauteng Premier David Makhura and the ANC to scrap e-tolls in Gauteng.
This follows a Western Cape High Court ruling that the South African National Roads Agency’s decision to toll highways in the Western Cape be set aside.
Judge Ashley Binns-Ward also ruled, on Wednesday, that the transport minister’s 2008 decision to declare portions of the N1 and N2 as toll roads be set aside.
This means the Winelands Toll Project will have to start from scratch if Sanral decides to go ahead with it.
E-tolling was implemented in Gauteng in December 2013, despite strong resistance from the public and organisations like the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa).
The DA’s John Moodey said in a statement “what has happened in the Western Cape, must now happen here in Gauteng”.
He said “e-tolls have been denying the poor access to jobs and have a detrimental effect on working class people, a fact which has now been recognised by the court”.
Moodey called the new e-toll dispensation a “red herring to force people to pay for an unjust and unfair system” that will continue to be met with resistance in the years ahead.
Instead, he said upgrades to Gauteng’s highways could have been funded by a small increase in the fuel levy.
He described e-tolls as a “virus slowly eating away this province’s (Gauteng’s) prospects for economic growth and job creation”.
Earlier on Wednesday, City of Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille said the Western Cape High Court ruling was “a victory for all Capetonians considering what happened in Gauteng”.
Meanwhile, Sanral said it will study the “details of the decision and will assess the legal options available to it.”
Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona said he was pleased “that environmental authorisations regarding the implementation of the project were upheld” but was disappointed that the court had set aside the decisions “concerning the procedure of the declaration to toll.”
In a statement, he said he believed the City’s real complaint with the project was “about tolling as a funding choice”.
Sanral had argued that tolling was a necessary funding mechanism for much needed upgrades of South Africa’s national roads.
The project has been in the making for more than ten years and Wednesday’s decision, as argued in Sanral’s court papers, have now rendered it “stillborn”.
Mona said the project, meant to improve the link between the Western Cape and the rest of the country, may never be realised.
“These include safety benefits to road users and the economic benefits to South Africa and the region. It will also prevent the direct and indirect creation of some 5000 jobs per annum for the duration of the thirty year concession period.”
He said upgrades to roads for the next 20 years, if at all, will not be forthcoming if the project is not allowed to proceed.
ANA