Mac Maharaj details his department’s new plan to modernise all aspects of South Africa’s transport management
WE all take the existence of roads, railways, airports and harbours for granted and only curse the inconvenience when confronted by traffic jams, accidents, ungovernable taxis and airport strikes. Still, in our better moments, most of us believe that a well developed and properly managed transport system is one of the keys to making our economy internationally competitive and realising our vision of inclusive social development.
The Department of Transport has just completed 30 months under an African Nationalist Congress-led government. It has been a period of intense debate and profound re-orientation of priorities. From it has emerged a comprehensive new policy and a strategic plan to modernise all aspects of transport management. At the same time, we have made a start on some of the massive projects that will be needed to move goods and people in the first part of the 21st century.
The Department is responsible for 7 000km of our national road network. It regulates and administers shipping and aviation (the pilots, the planes and the 57 airlines that fly into South Africa). It co-ordinates road traffic for eight million vehicles (which cause 460 000 accidents each year), and oversees the related MMF Fund (third party insurance) which pays out more than R1- billion to accident victims. It manages subsidies for buses and railways which move two million passengers every day, while it tries to regulate and help formalise the 130 000 taxis (60 000 of which do not have permits) that currently compete for the remaining two million passengers.
The Transport White Paper was adopted by Cabinet in September 1996. The consultation process used to develop the White Paper was guided by three key needs. They are the need for a more export-oriented and internationally competitive economy; the need for an efficiently integrated goods and public transport system; the need for a cohesive legislative and institutional framework to manage transport.
Some of the most important aspects of the new policy include: reducing the role of the government in operations and focusing on policy, planning and regulating; supporting social and economic development by using partnerships between the public and private sectors for the delivery of infrastructure and services; contracting out bus and rail services in a competitive and regulated environment and drawing the taxi industry into the formal transport system; and grappling with the carnage on our roads (10 000 deaths per year), through a comprehensive programme linking education and enforcement with engineering solutions.
In these 30 months we have notched up some significant achievements.
* Maputo Corridor. This project is one of four corridor initiatives the department is involved in with Trade and Industry. It unlocks economic investment potential along the shortest export route from Gauteng to Maputo (through Mpumalanga) by mobilising private sector resources to provide the infrastructure. The first crucial step will be taken in November, when a contract to build and operate an R800-million toll road on the N4 will be awarded on a 30 year concession.
As part of the corridor development, large- scale economic investment projects such as the cross-frontier park between Mozambique and South Africa, the building of a R4- billion aluminium smelter and a major titanium mining project in Tzaneen are being dimensioned.
* Roads. In the past two years we have issued contracts for the building of roads worth R2- billion. The N2, which will now link our busiest general cargo port in Durban to our biggest port in Richards Bay, will be opened on November 25. Early next year we will be concessioning the N3, linking Durban to Gauteng, to the private sector. This project will involve R1-billion of new construction. The N1, which is the vital link between South Africa and our northern neighbours, will be opening in April next year. Each of these contracts has stipulated that 12,5% of the work should go to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and 12,5% should be labour-intensive, resulting already in the creation of thousands of new jobs.
We have also been allocated R100-million from Reconstruction and Development funds to spend on roads in dangerous condition. We have already spent R40-million and created 70 000 person-days of work.
* Metropolitan Corridors. Four have been planned to make our cities more efficient and to begin overcoming the economic irrationality and reducing the human stress caused by apartheid planners who placed dormitory townships 30km away from industrial areas. In Cape Town work has started on the Phillipi corridor, which will link the old townships and squatter areas to Wynberg and promote medium-density housing, light industry and social services along a major public transport route.
* Restructuring of state assets. The key aims here are to generate funding, improve competition, and extend services in transport. The department has adopted a mixed approach – from outright privatisation (Sun Air), to strategic equity partnerships (Airports and South African Airways) and concessions, where the assets remain state- owned but operation is contracted out. The Cabinet has approved the proposals, negotiations with labour are well-advanced, and we can expect to see the first fruits within months.
* Public Transport. Legislation based on the White Paper will be presented to Parliament early next year – but implementation has already begun.
* Buses. Under the inherited subsidy system, bus operators had permits for life along routes which they determined and monopolised. >From now on, however, operators will have to sign “interim contracts” with the department for a specified duration, after which they will have to compete for newly defined routes based on transport plans taking into account user and community-determined needs. The subsidy will no longer be restricted, as at present, to purchasers of weekly or monthly tickets, but will be based on bus kilometres travelled, so that all users will benefit equally. This is the beginning of a fundamental transformation in public transport.
* Rail services. These are currently provided on a contract basis by Metro Rail of Transnet via a deficit financing arrangement through which losses are subsidised and there is no incentive to reduce the current 30% to 40% rate of fare evasion, cut operating costs or improve quality of service. An interim measure is to change the contract to a “concession”-type contract which is output rather than cost-based, thus creating some risk as well as an incentive to perform better. This is a prelude to concessioning the operation on a competitive basis to whichever operator, public or private, offers the best price to operate the service for a set period of time, while guaranteeing maintenance and extension of the infrastructure.
* Taxis. Despite the valuable service they have offered to urban commuters, they become a byword for violent lawlessness.
The NTTT (National Taxi Task Team) has produced a detailed set of recommendations on regulation, formalisation and economic assistance. These are being implemented now.
* “Arm’s-length agencies” and a lean department. The department is going to the Cabinet this month with proposals for setting up a national agency to manage roads. The agency will be funded by a portion of the fuel levy and will be responsible for implementation, while the department retains its crucial regulatory function. Similar agencies are planned for aviation and shipping. These agencies will be professionally managed at arm’s-length from government under a board of directors, dominated by private-sector users of their services. Once they are in place, the effect will be dramatically to reduce the staff of the department, from 1 400 to 400.
* Traffic Management. The computerised National Traffic Information System (NaTIS) is 80% implemented and will be complete next year. A tender has just been awarded for a new credit card driver’s licence which, linked to NaTIS, will allow us to introduce a points demerit system for regular offenders, capture data on all offences and thereby guarantee full payment of fines before a licence is re-issued.
Plans are well advanced for the building of 128 traffic control centres on our major roads to police overloading and ensure compliance with vehicle roadworthiness standards. The first five of these centres are under construction. We have also secured investment funding from the MMF to improve safety on our roads. These are some elements of a very comprehensive plan to reduce fatalities by 10% by the year 2000.
Watch this space. The political, strategic and management framework for revitalising transport is firmly in place. We are excited and confident, as 1997 approaches, that the whole country will soon be doing the locomotion for real.
— Mac Maharaj is Minister of Transport