The trucking industry is being allowed to ride roughshod over the South African motorist. Truckers pay more in toll fees, but very low amounts considering they are responsible for 10 000 times the damage to roads. Toll fees for heavy-duty trucks travelling on the N3 between Jo’burg and Durban add up R408. Motorists travelling in light passenger cars pay R110 for the same trip.
One expert says toll roads are bringing in enough money to maintain roads, but that motorists are paying a disproportionate share compared to truckers. “The total revenue from tolls is approximately right,” says University of Cape Town academic Anthony Leiman. “But the balance of the revenue is distorted in favour of trucks, rather than the common motorist.”
Last year, class-four vehicles, which have five or more axles, brought in more than R312million in toll revenue on the N3 between Jo’burg and Durban. In the same year, class-one or light passenger vehicles paid R293million in toll fees.
South African truckers are also allowed to carry much larger loads than many of their international peers, including the country’s Southern African Development Community neighbours. Compared to the United States, South African truckers are allowed to carry 40% more tonnage.
Illegal overloading worsens the problem; the Road Freight Association estimates that 15% to 20% of trucks on the country’s roads are overloaded.
The National Road Agency (NRA) estimates that 60% of unnecessary damage is caused by overloaded vehicles, costing the country R600million a year. “Is the maximum vehicle mass appropriate?” asks Leiman. “We have the heaviest vehicles anywhere in Southern Africa, and most of the world.”
Leiman says it is possible to build much cheaper roads if they are only going to service small vehicles. The high specification levels for roads that cater for trucks and the higher bridges that need to be built are hugely expensive. Another problem, says Leiman, is that trucks sometimes travel on secondary roads to avoid paying tolls. Massive damage results as these roads are not built to hold their weight.
The formula used by the NRA to calculate toll tariffs fails to take into account the damage caused by large trucks to the road network.
NRA’s eastern regional manager, Neil Tolmie, says the formula is a common principle in road-pricing theory and is aimed at maximising the attraction rate to the toll road. “There is no way that you can say trucks must pay 10 000 times more,” says Tolmie. “We have to be practical in determining tariffs. The current formula is a cost we have come to that is acceptable to the general public.”
NRA spokesperson Connie Nel says 80% of South Africa’s freight is moved by road and that heavy freight is becoming a major problem. “We are currently encouraging freight to make use of rail, but the rail infrastructure is probably not in a position to handle the capacity,” says Nel.
Spoornet spokesperson Mike Asefovitz says it has spare capacity and is aiming to increase rail freight traffic by 25% over the next five years, from the current level of 80million tons a year.
Leiman says the railways in South Africa are effectively being penalised by the subsidisation of toll roads. “The bulk of goods being transported are by truck, because trucks are seen as cheap and rail, expensive,” says Leiman. “Railroads pay all their own costs. They have to fork out to fix their lines and maintain them.”
The NRA 2005 annual report acknowledges the massive costs associated with overloading and points to attempts by the national Department of Transport to deal with the problem through its national overload control strategy.
This strategy recommends new legislation that makes the consignor and consignee jointly responsible for overloading, introduces heavier fines, increases the number of provincial weighbridges and suggests reviewing the maximum permissible mass per vehicle on provincial roads.
Leiman’s findings are contained in a report for the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (Tips), a policy think-tank. Entitled Efficiency and Road Privatisation: Bidding, Tolling and the “User Pays” Principle, the report says: “As the traditional freight carriers, the state railways were privatised [to form Spoornet]. They were confronted by new state regulations that raised the maximum gross vehicle mass to 56 tons, an unusually high level by international standards.
“The greater flexibility of road transport, and the economies of scale present when trucks are heavily loaded, saw increasing proportions of freight diverted from rail to road.
“The state’s failure to recover the costs these vehicles imposed on the road system distorted the system further in their favour and made the current system unsustainable without cross-subsidisation by taxpayers and drivers of small vehicles.”
The report also says: “If passenger car and light vehicle drivers are not to subsidise heavy commercial vehicles … the ratio between the toll paid by a heavy commercial vehicle and that paid by a light vehicle will have to vary more substantially.”
The report highlights the damage caused by a class-four truck with five axles that weighs 36,3 tons. It says this truck does as much damage as 10 240 two-axle cars each weighing 1,8 tons, but pays at most 7,6 times in toll fees the amount paid by one such car.
Light vs Heavy
The National Road Agency’s toll-road tariffs are based on “the road user benefit offered by a toll road relative to the alternative route” and are defined, for the purpose of toll tariff determination, as:
Light Vehicles
Savings in fuel costs and time if the potential toll road is used instead of the alternative route
The value of the motorway bonus, that is, the value of the increased safety, comfort and convenience associated with travelling on a higher quality road rather than a lower quality road with more frequent accesses.
Heavy Vehicles
Savings in variable operating costs
Savings in time costs
The value of the motorway bonus
— Lloyd Gedye