E-tolling 'cannot be undone' - lawyer

Gauteng motorists were warned that e-tolling "cannot be undone" and the court application to halt the contentious scheme is of "no consequence".

This is what a dvocate David Unterhalter, representing the South African National Roads Agency, told the Pretoria High Court yesterday.

He added that the government had already decided that e-tolling would fund the multibillion-rand Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project and that this was a matter of policy.

"We are going to have tolling. Gauteng roads will be tolled to pay for upgrading. We have invested billions in huge infrastructure that must be paid for," he said.

He denounced the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance's argument that Sanral deliberately kept Gauteng motorists in the dark by issuing "sterile" notices in the inner pages of five newspapers as a "grand conspiracy".

He denied Outa's contention that the public was kept out of the loop, and that legislation was pushed through without scrutiny, saying these statements had no factual foundation.

"[Outa's] strategy is to avoid the user pays principle in the hope that the fiscus will pay [for the upgrading and construction]," he said.

Unterhalter said Outa represented people who could afford cars and insurance but now wanted part of the budget reserved for the poor to pay for the upgraded roads.

He said Sanral had long discussed the planned levies in public forums.

He said there had been widespread engagement with the public about the e-tolling scheme through a variety of media.

He said there were 132 news articles on the freeway improvement project between 2006 and this year alone .

He claimed that one would have to be a Martian or a person living in a bubble not to have noticed the massive upgrades that were being done on Johannesburg's freeways, particularly ahead of the World Cup.

He said that in October 2008, then minister of transport S'bu Ndebele mentioned in a speech that the construction and upgrading of Gauteng freeways would be funded through the user-pay principle.

He said the South African Vehicle Renting and Leasing Association, which supports Outa in the application, participated in Sanral's Question and Answer session in July 2007.

Unterhalter also dismissed Outa's submission that the e-tolling scheme was irrational and economically unsound, saying there was an R8 spin-off for every rand invested in the infrastructure and that 17c out of every R1 will be used for toll collection.

Though he did not supply a figure on what the toll collection would cost, Unterhalter said Outa's claim that tariff collection would see R30.5-billion wasted was inaccurate.

Advocate Vincent Maleka, for Minister of Transport Ben Martins, said Ndebele considered each and every statutory requirement before approving the e-tolling declaration.

He said Gauteng motorists should pay to use the roads as it was incomprehensible to expect someone from Limpopo to pay for roads in Gauteng.

The case continues today.