Gautrain: "Axing tolls will hurt" warns GMA

[Steve Appleton]

From Business Day, 17 January 2012. http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/C ... ?id=162670

Axing road tolls will hurt Gautrain, warns agency.

The Gautrain Management Agency’s CEO Jack van der Merwe says commuters are more likely to use the highway for free rather than pay train fares.

NICKY SMITH
Published: 2012/01/17 07:17:24 AM

ABANDONING tolling on Gauteng’s freeways would have a direct negative effect on the R30bn Gautrain as commuters were more likely to use the highway for free rather than pay train fares, the Gautrain Management Agency’s CEO said yesterday. "Our selling point is really time and cost. If there is major congestion and delays on the road, it is quite expensive for people and it is an easier choice to take the train," said Jack van der Merwe.

Lower passenger levels will likely mean that the Gauteng government will have to provide subsidies to the Bombela Concession Company for a longer period. Mr van der Merwe said that according to the Gautrain Management Agency’s model for train demand, passenger levels were forecast to reach a point where no further subsidies would be required after about six years of operation.

The postponing of tolling in Gauteng meant the provincial government would have to pay subsidies for one to four years more than originally planned. He said new calculations had to be done to determine how long subsidies would need to be paid. In determining the demand for the Gautrain service over the next few years, the agency assumed the road between Johannesburg and Pretoria would be tolled. "But now if the toll roads are going to be free, we are sitting with a road network that has five to eight years of excess capacity … it will have an impact on the ridership of the Gautrain," he said.

The board of the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) said on Friday that tolling on Gauteng’s freeways, scheduled to start next month, had been postponed indefinitely in order to address the raft of petitions that have been drafted by business and civil society groups in opposition to the scheme. The move caught Sanral CEO Nazir Alli by surprise. Sanral will cancel its March bond auction as it will not be able to sell bonds without having an income from tolls.

The decision to stop tolling would have unintended consequences, Mr Alli warned. "One of the things with a user-pays principle is that it makes people consider their alternatives to private vehicle use," he said. Studies by Sanral showed the creation of "smart roads", or toll roads, in Gauteng would decrease demand for roads by 5%-7% because "with smart roads there is an incentive to move away from private vehicles", Mr Alli said.

The Gautrain Management Agency has budgeted about R300m to pay the Bombela Concession Company for the financial year ended March 31 after the train started operations in August. A similar amount is budgeted for the 2013 financial year, Mr van der Merwe said. "I can tell you without any doubt that it will have an impact if there is a decision not to toll."