OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday
AS South Africa’s roads continue to crumble, the National Roads Agency is to investigate the building of 18 new toll routes which could see up to 3500km of roads fall under private management in the next five years.
According to a report in the Business Day newspaper, the road network has a backlog of about R3,2bn due to years of underfunding and officials say there is little hope of budgetary increases for roads in the near future.
The move towards toll roads, which involves the private sector operating and maintaining roads for up to 30 years while ownership remains with the state, is largely the result of funding constraints, the newspaper reported.
The agency received R635m this financial year against a requested budget of R1bn needed annually to maintain the network.
The agency’s CEO, Nazir Alli, said that due to the funding restraints, toll roads were the most practical route to take. He said the private sector had responded favourably to financing such projects in the past, evidenced by the three toll roads approved to date by government.
The three toll roads under way are the R3bn N4 toll road between Witbank and Maputo, the R2,5bn N3 between Durban and Johannesburg and the R2,6bn Platinum toll road linking Gauteng with Maputo and Namibia. The 30-year concession for the Platinum toll road is due to be finalised within days.
Alli said that the proposed new toll roads were a combination of projects identified by the road agency and six unsolicited schemes submitted by private companies.
The unsolicited bid projects, a practice introduced by the transport ministry in 1997, include the N2 Garden Route between George and Port Elizabeth and the N2 Wild Coast toll road between Durban and East London.
The bigger schemes include the N1 between Kroonstad and Three Sisters, the N12 between Johannesburg and Kimberley and the N2 between Ermelo, Piet Retief and Empangeni.